Fernando García Ponce

(Merida, Yucatan, 1933 – Mexico City, 1987)

Striped Abstraction

n.d.

silkscreen on paper (45/75)

55 x 76 cm

Inv. no. CSR424

BBVA Collection Mexico



García Ponce’s background in architecture explains his liking for arranging the compositional space in geometric structures. His large format canvases and sheets of paper for printing were organised along diagonal and perpendicular axes in a harmonious union of geometry and emotion.

Striped Abstraction contains several boxes in which different planes of collaged elements intersect. At the time, this use of found materials was rather unusual, not to say non-existent, in Mexican abstract painting. The medicine containers, signs, newspaper clippings with scrawls, strips of linoleum, labels and other offcuts that García Ponce accumulated in his works are possibly a reflection of his great admiration for the work of Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948), the German artist whose sculptural-architectonic assemblages he paid homage to.

This silkscreen evinces the constructivist endeavour—possibly emanating, as well, from cubist rigour—and the emotional keenness entailed in his quest for purity. A clever visual balance and the contention of underlying violence in the structures allow us to glimpse the formal and emotional charge of the work and a tension between order and chaos.