This work by Escada, the largest in the series of cut-out reliefs he produced, functions as a point of arrival for the work carried out by the painter since the 1950s and which developed in the pictorial research he pursued throughout the following decade. Establishing a parallel between this work and Painting, a canvas completed nine years earlier, we find common ground, such as a composition modelled on the play of light between symmetrical forms and the relationship between the different spaces that structure it, replicating through its dimensions, gradually getting smaller from the centre to the edges, the chiaroscuro that enlivened the 1965 work. This work continues the artist’s research into the formal possibilities of line and light, which took on a new perspective when Escada visited a Matisse exhibition in 1966, at which paper cut-outs were on display.

The play of positive/negative and form/background of his previous painting is continued here through the use of the reflective character of the material, which contrasts strongly with the shadows produced by the concaves and convexities caused by the folding of the metal cut-outs, resulting in something between form and figure. This ambiguity was expressed by the artist himself in 1968, when he stated that: “a work of art is a construction that balances between abstraction and the concrete, between general composition and detail, between non-figuration and naturalism, between being and nothing”, thus providing space for intuition both in the act of painting and in the moment of reception, respecting the expression of Kandinsky’s “internal mysticism”: “We have always to recover our sense of sight, as our eyes are easily distracted from focus. Let us, therefore, look freely. Let us for a moment abandon our preoccupation with identifying, with recognising ‑ so that the form that is also in us might be discovered.”

André da Silveira Rodrigues