José María Yturralde

(Cuenca, 1942)

Figuras Imposibles (Impossible Figures)

1974

Silkscreen on paper (1/125) & (6/125)

63.60 x 48.80 cm

Inv. no. 33878 & 33877 b

BBVA Collection Spain



A multidisciplinary artist, José María Yturralde has played an instrumental role in the renewal of twentieth-century Spanish art, largely thanks to his innovative incorporation of technology and science into the realm of artistic creation.

In the 1960s, Yturralde became interested in non-figurative international movements, particularly
and Kinetic Art because of their relationship with mathematics and geometry, underscoring his tireless quest for the link that connected science and art. Between 1968 and 1973, the artist was able to experiment with this relationship first-hand thanks to a grant that allowed him to join the first Automatic Generation of Visual Forms seminar held at CCUM (Calculus Centre, University of Madrid) together with other artists of the time, like José Luis Alexanco (1942-2021), Eusebio Sempere (1923-1985) and Soledad Sevilla (1944), among others. The event, absolutely seminal in fostering a new way of understanding art in Spain, was propelled by IBM’s donation of a IBM 7090 supercomputer, the first of its kind in Spain, which helped the Calculus Centre to become a laboratory to explore the potential for the use of automatic calculus in disciplines outside the field of technology, like music, literature or the fine arts.

This was the context in which José María Yturralde conceived his celebrated Figuras Imposibles [Impossible Figures], the outcome of intensive teamwork to develop a computer programme able to generate multiple combinations of Penrose polygons of three, four and five sides. An algorithm was used to create infinite images, which Yturralde later studied, selecting those he viewed as most attractive. After choosing the shape he was interested in, he transferred its profiles to a variety of media. As we may see in this silkscreen, the result of that process was a rereading from a contemporary viewpoint of the utopian scenographies developed by Escher (1898-1972), presenting a totally implausible figure that looks absolutely real. With these compositions, based on perceptual plays with which he achieves three-dimensionality using two-dimensional data, Yturralde encourages the spectators to stop and look at the piece in order to unravel the mystery shrouded in its complexity. Visually speaking, here one is struck by the powerful palette of the silhouette that seems to emerge from a dark backdrop which highlights the vibrant colour of the structure and emphasises its weightlessness.

The BBVA Collection possesses an extraordinary group of these prints that were central to Yturralde’s output and laid the foundation for the series of sculptures known as “flying structures” which he created in the mid-1970s during his time at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).