In this work from the early 1970s, which was incorporated into the Modern Collection in 1981, José Escada offers a variation on the theme of light and organic matter, with colour replaced by a (greyish) achromia of sepias and blacks. The removal of colour bestows this image (as with others from the same series, begun in around 1963) with an enigmatic quality that is accentuated by the light contrast: shifting, with no beginning or end, forming an open organic pattern, identical to itself and multifarious, simple and sophisticated. The diversity and oneness of nature, the common link between plant and animal species, of which human beings are a part, cells and lines, form a common language in the paintings and three-dimensional cut-out reliefs that José Escada created during the same period. Thus, this work can be positioned alongside the Untitled (1974), in tin plate, which forms part of the Modern Collection (inv. 95P347), being structured according to the same polyphonic compartmentalisation of space, in modules of varying dimensions that form part of films, filaments, microtubules, and lanceolates. This interaction between form and background forms the artist’s characteristic “cloisonné”: spaces born from spaces; pleats, creases and wrinkles; undulating and dynamic figures sprouting from the sequential organisation of flat, concave and convex surfaces – in short, a labyrinth. The charm of this work resides, to a large degree, in this effect of continuous sinuosity, with no beginning or end, forms and signs combining in patterns that are simultaneously similar and unique, on the orthogonal framework – itself freely interpreted – of the background. The vocabulary of signs dear to Escada forms a complete morphology: a catalogue of contiguous and interlinked (proto-) forms, membranes and organs, body parts, but also stellate, tree-like, dendritic cells that are transformed on a discreetly geometrical background, from which the artist succeeds in extracting, with maximum efficiency, the suggestion of undefined plasmatic movement. Natural history, according to José Escada, is the narrative of the common link between plants and animals: organic material, time and space, harmony and mystery.

Ana Filipa Candeias