Fernando Zóbel is a unique case in the development of avant-garde art in Spain after the 1950s. Born in Manila, he studied philosophy at Harvard and, after engaging in various activities in different countries, settled in Spain in 1961. The periods he spent in the United States and Paris brought him into contact with American Abstract Expressionism and Art Informel, which had a decisive impact on his painting and marked his career. Zóbel gave up his earlier figurative painting and dove headlong into the world of abstraction.

In Spain, Zóbel began acquiring works by Spanish abstract artists, and in 1966 he founded the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca, which soon became a beacon of the Spanish avant-garde.

However, there is one fundamental fact that defined his painting: Zóbel was acquainted with the expressivity of American abstraction and familiar with the pathetic aggressiveness of Spanish Art Informel, but neither of these approaches made a mark on him—indeed, his oeuvre is a solitary island in the international sea of abstraction. He tended towards experimentation with a lyrical abstraction that connected with a subtle poetics of the oneiric.

Zóbel's paintings developed a series of blurred calligraphies in constant motion to the point that they became imperceptible, turning them into suggestions of an imaginary space. Fuga en rosa [Flight in Pink] reveals how gestures became lines, vague, watered-down strokes that atomise and create a spatial benchmark. El Guadalquivir desde el puente de San Telmo [The River Guadalquivir from San Telmo Bridge] shows this reduction of painting to its barest essence. The blurred, ambiguous expression is diluted in an attempt to conceal itself. We see the same thing in Bodegón con palmera [Still Life with Palm Tree] and Marina gris [Grey Seascape].

Zóbel's painting moves in the same sphere as the work of painters who translated the gesture into calligraphy. But it is most closely related to oriental painting, in which limitless spaces abound and writing becomes the theme of the work. De la serie de recuerdos [From the Series of Memories] illustrates the value of weightlessness as a reference of painting and the intention of concealing it until it becomes an airy, suggestive evasion.

In his painting Zóbel uses blurred lines, applied swiftly and spontaneously yet under control, and the result is images that strike a balance between impulse and rationality. [Víctor Nieto Alcaide]