This is an excellent example of Tàpies’ mid-career. was a constant in the practice of this Catalan artist from his beginnings in the field of , when he was supported, outside Spain, by the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York, the provenance of this piece.
In this work, the artist treats the painterly mass as a solid foundation with a sandy texture on which to create some deep furrows. It is reminiscent in ways of his so-called “walls”, with their categorical presence, where matter is given the main focus, imposing itself over form and colour, which are reduced in this particular piece to five marks and monochromatic grey.
A parallel could be drawn between this work and Enveloppe, also in the BBVA Collection: when viewed horizontally, this painting takes on a new reading, as an envelope. By changing the arrangement, the artist disrupts the meaning and turns the piece into an abstraction with elementary lines that seems to play with one of those archetype-objects habitual in his work.