Catálogo de la exposición - Fundación César Manrique

landscapes and train stations. He himself said that he was obsessed by two subjects: buses
“made my imagination wander, thinking about the landscapes they would collect in their
travels, about the mysterious worlds they would see, as I watched them driving up and
down the street”; and soccer goalies “there was mystery there as well, magic in a man who
could soar into mid-air and magically seize a ball shot at him from some unknown corner
[...] just like the buses”.
The reference here is plainly to movement and travel, an idea clearly conveyed by the
paintings from those years, with trains entering and leaving stations. His first “travels” were
as a delivery man for his father’s cardboard factory, “trips” that he would spend painting,
even in the delivery van. These works, such as Paisaje con tren [Landscape with train] and
Anochecer en la Central [Nightfall at the plant] were composed along classical lines, although
in one titled Paisaje [Landscape], now hanging in the Juan Manuel Blanes Municipal Museum
of Montevideo, there is a hint of the composition style that would characterise his later
abstract works: a triangle and criss-crossed lines - although here the lines were painted with
oil, not drawn with slender slats of wood. He would still have to come a long way before
his pictures were to reach that degree of artistic development. To attain that goal,
Washington had to embark on a mysterious trip that was to take him to the unknown, to
a place inside himself where he would discover that he was able to “live like a painter”.
His first trip to Europe was followed by his return to Madrid and Paris in 1955 and although
he was unable to stay and live in the creative outburst to be found everywhere in Europe
in those years, a window was opened and he understood that his course had yet to be
charted. Back in Uruguay, although his output was not particularly large, he continued to
paint for the National Salons. It was not until 1974, at the age of 54, that he decided to
move to Madrid, empty-handed but intent upon working a change in his painting. “I’m going
to build my way as I go” he told María Elena, and as if clearing the path for this new
beginning, he destroyed much of his work before his departure.
Things found and Things grasped
When Barcala arrived, Spain was ridding itself of the dictatorship that still ruled the country.
The Madrid he found was quite different from the Madrid he had left in the fifties. Post-war
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