Jesús Palomino’s series of drawings (1993) and of collages (1994) in the Banco de España Collection, both of which are untitled, are from an early period in his career, before he abandoned the production of introspective graphic works that heralded the architectural, projective aspects observable in his later work. They are an interesting case in the context of the career of an artist who has progressively turned his back on studio work and the self-absorption that it involves. As he explains, ‘those two aspects interested me right from the start […]: on the one hand studio work and on the other hand public art projects. I am not really sure why that was the case. You sometimes do not always know why your process as an artist is what it is. Even so, I have always remained highly interested in colour and in creating two-dimensional works just because they amuse me; they follow an erotic impulse, with erotic being taken in the broadest sense. […] I have sometimes resorted to some kind of iconographic references, but basically they were used as exercises for personal pleasure with colour and forms on a two-dimensional surface.There were amusing collages with hints of humour. Indeed, they worked in the commercial space of the gallery as pieces that could be collected. My interest then shifted in other directions and I just decided not to do that anymore. It was not a dramatic decision. It was something completely experiential and natural in my process’.

Palomino, who has been highly into social emergency art since the turn of the century, thus defines a nearly exclusively formal and entertaining endeavour in his initial work. However, given his subsequent shift towards the dilution of neo-plastic forms, this initial interest in geometry, particularly in the series of collages, embodies a pre-revolutionary scrutiny, à la Malevich, taking the generation of forms and testing combinations from the new territory that, over time, would come to underpin his more openly constructivist work. That transition from the intimate and the collective, from the house to the street, the studio to the public sphere, led Maria Lluïsa Borràs to describe Palomino’s art as ‘a utopia in a minor key’.

Carlos Martín