Belonging to a new phase of itinerary-paintings, Vau – Praia, from 1982, is an example of one of the maps created by Joaquim Rodrigo showing a landscape, often one he experienced on a daily basis. In a rejection of a completely planimetric point of view, the painting consists of an irregular aerial view in which, in a contradictory fashion, simplified, frontal representations of humans, animals and plants are placed. The mismatched scale of these figures clearly reveals that the aim is not to represent so much an actual territory but primarily the way in which this territory is recalled.

The composition is characterised by a marked contrast between figure(s) and background(s), expressed as a formalised kaleidoscopic structure based on areas of uniform colour drawn from a palette reduced to two ochres, black and white. Evoking certain primitive cultures, and Aboriginal culture in particular, the painting symbolically and schematically registers and systematises an area which has been traversed and experienced by the artist himself. In this sense it becomes a kind of reification of a landscape.

MBA

October 2011