Manuel Franquelo’s work, straddling art and science, is predicated on constant experimentation and investigation into the human being’s perception of reality. This work on board from the BBVA Collection dates from a period in which the artist’s research was centred on drawing and painting, before he later incorporated other mediums and technologies.

Here, he engages with the sublime by means of painstaking technique and patient everyday work with the goal of eliminating any personal trace of the artist’s hand so that the focus of attention is solely on the represented object. To achieve this degree of detail, Franquelo combines manual skill with the invention of specific instruments that enable him to measure colour or a certain application of pigment more exactly.

In an activity which the artist himself calls obsessive, he spends hours in front of the objects he wishes to depict. With painstaking attention to detail he places each thing in its precise place, yet not in a photographic style, but rather to achieve an essential vision of the represented object.

Throughout his production, he frequently recurs to the genre of still life, calling attention to what we normally consider insignificant and often goes unnoticed. In consequence, he updates this classical genre, in which he combines everyday contemporary elements, like a pack of pills, with others that refer to tradition and the passing of time, like the chalice. As a result, his still lifes are intimate, domestic and private while at once theatrical, sophisticated, enigmatic and spectral.