Menez only rarely gave titles to her works. In this untitled oil on canvas, intensely coloured planes tinged with velvety blues, browns, reds and yellows agglomerate to form a large, irregular, asymmetrical mass against a white background. Sinuous and irregular, and punctuated by pinks and ochres, these planes are given a collage-like quality by the effects of overlaying and superimposition, and by the yellow line that borders or circumscribes them, in arcs and curves, straight lines and diagonals. The pattern of diagonals and arcs on the left and in the bottom right hand corner of this grouping creates a sense of movement in the composition, while also suggesting the memory of perspective, concrete physical spaces that have been transfigured by the creative imagination. Over this coagulation of colour, apparently on top of the uppermost plane of the image, an oval which casts a small curling pinkish shadow counters the colourism and informalist nature of the grouping, reestablishing a harmonious dialogue with the background.

Untitled is part of a series of works that Menez produced after 1966 which, though still predominantly abstract in influence, hints at the return to figuration that would become more pronounced from the 1970s onwards (in the surprising Retrato de Areal [Portrait of Areal], from 1970, or the slightly earlier Objeto paralelepípedo [Parallelepiped Object], from 1969, both in CAM’s collection) before becoming firmly established from the mid-1980s onwards. Thus, remnants of constructed spaces, of patterns and forms that are partially structured, or which have a primitive or primordial organic quality, signs and graphic marks, seem to be trying to emerge from a visual chaos with an undefined appearance, as in the series of drawings, collages and paintings that the artist created during this period, their common quality generally being the rhythmic animation of visual elements against a light coloured surface (white or similar). In this painting, too, there is evidence of a search for spatial equilibrium, suggested by the stabilisation and framing of the mass of colour on the canvas, even though the painter’s use of gesture and colour appears have its own origin, according to which it evolves, with no apparent connection to the surrounding world.

Ana Filipa Candeias

May 2013