Jorge Pinheiro’s work was initially figurative, influenced by expressionist solutions and literary and social themes that linked it to the process by which neo-realist poetics were being diluted. In 1966, a complete rupture took place, and all of his work came to form part of the historic developments associated with geometric abstraction, from Phillip King or Max Bill’s (two and three-dimensional) visual experiments to Rudolph Arnheim’s speculations in the field of Art Psychology. In the 1970s, he returned to figuration but continued with his most radical abstract investigation, which revolved around the visual possibilities of the Fibonacci series, until the beginning of the next decade.

The work that is shown was produced within the context of the “4 Vintes” Group. It is one of Jorge Pinheiro’s first experiments in the new field of expression and is one of the most perfect examples of his early abstract vocabulary and working methodology. His perfect mastery of colour is evident in the way that it participates in and determines the internal and external definition of the form and how the link between both introduces subtle plays of optical illusionism, which, in other works, would come to be accentuated by the use of mirrors and panes of glass. On the one hand, it is an image that lacks a narrative. On the other hand, however, the ascending and descending development and the sudden introduction of undulation in a figure that seemed destined to be symmetrical confer dynamism, freedom, and humour on the whole.

João Pinharanda

May 2010