Luis García-Ochoa was a member of the second Vallecas School, led by Benjamín Palencia. This painting shows the survival of a certain reflection on the landscape that spawned some important twentieth-century Spanish art. Yet while the Vallecas School, with its interest in desolate wastelands, sought to capture the harshness of the Spanish countryside in ochre tones, García-Ochoa applied a poetics of completely liberated and autonomous colour, midway between Fauvism and expressionism, which escapes that vision to develop a concept that is at once playful and dramatic. In this composition, the trees and the path are no more than a pretext for an investigation that is primarily chromatic. Starting from a simple, even standard, theme, and using a range based fundamentally on shades of green, vermilion and magenta, with some touches of burnt umber, blue and white, the artist makes a forceful use of colour. In this he is supported by a certain baroque style, in a cloudscape that converses with the masses of trees that seem to prevent it from expanding further, creating a deliberate visual noise.

• Julián Gállego Serrano
• María José Alonso
• Carlos Martín