This mature painting by Baixeras boast great expressiveness and power. It contain vibrant colours and is shrouded in the mystery conveyed by floating heads or by emptiness itself. It belong to the serie Doble respuesta (Double Response) made by the artist in 1984.

Baixeras’ work combines echoes from

 art autre 

and art informel are terms coined by the French art critic Michael Tapié to describe the non-

 Geometric Abstraction 

A term introduced in the 1920s to name a kind of abstract art based on scientific and mathematical principles. The main goal was to eliminate all subjectivity in favour of art based on the essence of geometric forms. Its main champions were Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Kazimir Malevich (1879-1935) and Piet Mondrian (1872-1944).

that emerged in France in the 1950s, running parallel to US

 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.

. It was predicated on the spontaneous gesture, the use of matter, automatism and the lack of preconceived ideas.

and from conceptual painting, permeated by undeniable lyricism. An underlying sense of geometry is also implicit in the neutral ranges of colour that gradually acquire warmer and more vibrant hues. Meanwhile, the colour stains, black, and the figurative elements are rooted in a dream-like world.

By returning to the notion of the window, the artist makes a painting inside the painting itself. The long and narrow window creates a double space confronting an empty surface and a full one through the use of colour; or those two heads floating in space, perhaps as a metaphor of their own thought or of their own image facing the blank canvas where the painting is going to be executed.

This series has been read as a reflection on the self, and also as a pessimistic view of the individual—an isolated head against a background conveying mystery and restlessness.

Baixeras’ painting is not impulsive; on the contrary, it is underpinned by intellectual analysis, either pictorial or metaphysical, or sometimes permeated by existentialism for, as he himself admits: “my play is as infinite as my death…”

The subject matters depicted in each one of Baixeras’ works are the result of an ongoing reflection on Ernst Gombrich’s essays, the critiques by the , and the tenets of the

 Support-Surface 

tendencia artística que se oponía a movimientos como el minimal y el neodadaísmo en favor del propio acto pictórico. Los componentes de este efímero grupo concedían la misma importancia a los materiales, al gesto pictórico y a la obra acabada, desplazando el tema a un segundo término.

movement. His connection with the Atlántica group, that turned the art scene in Galicia on its head in the 1980s, is seen through his quest for new signs of identity in which the artist combines the ancient tradition of his homeland with what was then brewing both in Europe and in the United States.