The density and blackness of neoprene provides a backdrop to this exceptional piece by an artist who uses paraffin as an instrument to represent a scene he invites the beholder to discover.

A conceptual artist in the 1970s, in the 1980s his painting retained a trace of the

 matter-based painting 

“matteric” or matter-based painting is a tendency within informel art or

 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.

, in which artists focused primarily on texture, obtained by using all kinds of materials, not necessarily coming from conventional art methods.

developed in Catalonia by artists such as Antoni Tàpies (1923-2012), but combined with an enigmatic figuration that was never diluted into the abstraction. Frederic Amat is not an easily classifiable artist. He worked across various disciplines of expression: stage design, painting, printmaking and sculpture, in which death, violence and sex are recurrent subject matters.

He has been related with and with artists such as Miquel Barceló (1957) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), both in his aesthetics but also in the ongoing research he undertakes to incorporate new materials. In that regard, the use of paraffin —present in this work— as a painterly matter meant a big challenge because it forces the coexistence of materials of radically different properties and conditions of stability on the support. The result is one of his most accomplished works, in which several translucent surfaces of great visual power coexist.

His works frequently bear titles with figurative references. That is the case of this piece: Les Baigneuses, whose title, the bathers, encourages us to try to identify the scene in front of our eyes. Against a dark, nocturnal background, we see a somewhat choppy sea on which the three suspended objects are reflected, making us think of the moon, which is not included in the composition, as the source of light. What do those objects represent? The two floating objects may well be bathers —phallic object and receptacle— or toys left behind after a day on the beach. The yellow hut could also be the profile of a human figure, perhaps of the future being that will be born from the coupling of the other two.