Composition in Ochre, 1968. Oil on canvas. 80 × 100 cm.
Lot 009 · Paintings
Composition in Ochre
Elena Vasquez
Year
1968
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
80 × 100 cm
Estimate
NZD 14,000–19,000
Painted three years before Untitled (Memory I) in the same sale, this earlier work reveals the development of Vasquez's mature language. The composition is more open — the ochre ground is allowed to breathe between passages of dense impasto — and the palette is warmer, dominated by raw sienna and yellow ochre with accents of burnt umber. The work was acquired directly from the artist by a Madrid collector who remained a close friend until her death, and has not been offered at auction before.
Artist
Elena Vasquez
Elena Vasquez (b. 1938, Seville; d. 2009, Madrid) was one of the most significant voices in post-war Spanish abstraction. Trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando under Antonio López Torres, she developed a language of dense, layered pigment that drew on the ochre landscapes of Andalusia. Her work entered major European collections during the 1970s and was the subject of a retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofía in 1994.