Antoni Cumella played a crucial role in promoting and shaping the understanding of contemporary Spanish ceramics, and his formal experimentation with the medium blurred the boundaries between painting, sculpture and the applied arts.

This mid-career work belongs to a moment of creative maturity in Cumella’s practice, when his style was already clearly defined and his reputation in Spain and throughout Europe, particularly in Germany, was well established. Conceived as a whole, it contains the signature forms of his sculptural work in a highly organic abstract language that affords glimpses of the influence of artists like Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) or Henry Moore (1898-1986).

Cumella made most of his sculptures in stoneware, an extraordinarily malleable material which gives him greater freedom to experiment with solid mass and voids. Stoneware, fired at high temperature following Oriental methods, had already been used by Josep Llorens Artigas (1892-1980), a ceramist with whom Cumella had close ties.

The circle and the curve are key elements in Cumella’s work. He uses them here to create a vertical trunk with several cavities and an almond shaped stone-like piece which he would repeat in many versions during the following years. The shapes are then further defined and underscored with marks and incisions.

Similarly, in an exercise in combining different disciplines so characteristic of his practice, the surface is coated with an enamelled covering, closely reminiscent of painting in the

 Informalism 

Term coined by the French art critic Michel Tapié (under the name of art informel) to define the art movement that covers a whole range of abstract and gestural trends that emerged in Europe in the 1940s in parallel with the development of

 Abstract Expressionism 

This contemporary painting movement emerged within the field of abstraction in the 1940s in the United States, from where it spread worldwide. Rooted in similar premises and postulates as Surrealism, the Abstract Expressionist artists regarded the act of painting as a spontaneous and unconscious activity, a dynamic bodily action divested of any kind of prior planning. The works belonging to this movement are defined by the use of pure, vibrant primary colours that convey a profound sense of freedom. The movement’s main pioneers were, among others, Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) and Hans Hoffman (1880-1966). Leading Spanish exponents of the movement are Esteban Vicente (1903-2001) and José Guerrero (1914-1991), who lived for some time in New York City, where they were in first-hand contact with the many artistic innovations taking place there around that time.

in America. The movement is defined by a non-figurative language that lends a very significant role to the use of materials. The defining moment for Informalismo in Spain was in the 1950s, with a generation of artists whose languages embraced both European Art Informel and American

 Abstract Expressionism 

This contemporary painting movement emerged within the field of abstraction in the 1940s in the United States, from where it spread worldwide. Rooted in similar premises and postulates as Surrealism, the Abstract Expressionist artists regarded the act of painting as a spontaneous and unconscious activity, a dynamic bodily action divested of any kind of prior planning. The works belonging to this movement are defined by the use of pure, vibrant primary colours that convey a profound sense of freedom. The movement’s main pioneers were, among others, Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) and Hans Hoffman (1880-1966). Leading Spanish exponents of the movement are Esteban Vicente (1903-2001) and José Guerrero (1914-1991), who lived for some time in New York City, where they were in first-hand contact with the many artistic innovations taking place there around that time.

. These included, among others, Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012), Josep Guinovart (1927-2007), August Puig (1929-1999), Antonio Saura (1930-1998), Manolo Millares (1926-1972) and Rafael Canogar (1935).

style. Cumella makes good use of a wide palette of well-rehearsed tonalities which he employed to achieve areas of colour full of varying nuances, gradations and finishes.

Just like his volumes, his motifs and coverings were also borrowed from nature, and in his textures and forms one can readily discern the surfaces of a rock, a fossil, a shell or cellular tissue.

In works like this, the Catalan artist experimented with the artistic potential of ceramics, updating the tradition of pottery through the lens of contemporary sculpture.