Sin título (Serie) [Untitled (Series)]
- 1993
- Acrylic on paper (4 works in Collection)
- 30 x 40 cm each
- Cat. D_S_9
- Acquired in 1994
This series of sketches dates from 1994, when Berta Álvarez Cáccamo completed her time at the Spanish Academy in Rome and returned to Galicia to continue her exploration of plastic arts. They are monochrome images drawn with thick strokes on paper. She worked in this medium just as frequently as in painting. This continual recourse to drawing can be linked to process as a core notion in her work over the years, with her output seen as "doing". Her colleague Miquel Mont quotes her as saying that: 'what is done interests me far less than how it is done'.
The series of sketches in the Banco de España Collection hint at numerous themes that were to emerge in her later work, such as Spillages, in which (as the title indicates) she spills paint over flat surfaces in a controlled fashion, evoking multiple associations with the history of expressions of abstraction. Monochrome painting, action painting, dripping, and the dimension of primal gestures in the production of images are all themes that run through her oeuvre. These references function in her works as marginal notes, mitigated by a process constructed from a unique, moderated use of associations and autobiographical material. Thus, her work incorporates both the great stories she learned in her formative years as a painter and materials drawn from a 'memory of shape' inherited from and linked to contexts closer to her, forming a unique collection of images.
Other works by Berta Cáccamo