From the start of her professional career in the late 1980s, Ángeles San José's work has been shown at major international group exhibitions and solo shows, amongst others, at the Galería Antonio Machón (Madrid), the Galería Alfonso Alcolea (Madrid), the Galería Alejandro de Sales (Barcelona) and the Galería Adora Calvo (Salamanca). She received a BFA from the Complutense University of Madrid and went on to be awarded a research grant (1985-1989), the Banesto Visual Arts grant (1985) and the Endesa Visual Arts grant (1996).

Her work has been exhibited at the Galerie Wirth (Zurich, Switzerland, 1990); the Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno (Las Palmas, 1996); and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2004), among other institutions. She is represented by the Galería Adora Calvo.

She uses painting, drawing and photography to construct black and white images that explore the possibilities of plastic languages, using minimal elements and drawing on her exhaustive knowledge of history. Some of the 'classic' features that have characterised her work from the outset include colour, light, pictorial space, geometry and abstraction. She uses a variety of techniques, including resins, encaustic paint, graphite, oil and gold leaf.

The piece in the Banco de España Collection reflects her ongoing interest in landscape, which he has subsequently maintained, with series such as Un paisaje en el norte [A Landscape in the North] (2015). Deer park [El parque de los ciervos] (2002-2003) is a three-part mural-like painting. This is a format she commonly uses in her work. She reconfigures the landscape genre, viewing the natural territory as a space whose appearance can (literally) be changed in the artist's hands. As she puts it, it is 'a contemporary vision of the landscape that involves breaking it down.... into short fragments; it is something glimpsed or fragmentary; in the evocation, the afterward. Nature as something than can be illuminated'.

In the words of historian Marta González Orbegozo, San José's works are '(resin?) paintings and (daguerreotype?) photographs' that emphasise the characteristic ambiguity of her images. Her quiet art considers the limits of representation. The experience of the time deposited and accumulated in each project, acquires a material presence that underlines the processual nature of her paintings.

• Beatriz Herráez
• Carlos Martín