Catálogo de la exposición - Fundación César Manrique

gloom was a thing of the past and cultural and intellectual revival was evident everywhere.
Much had already been done in the area of art. The El Paso group had made an abrupt break
with the figurative representation of reality. This group, along with Lucio Muñoz, comprised
what might be called Spanish abstract expressionism. Barcala would meet and mix with
some of these artists, and even exchange works of art with them. These painters and
creators were the first to appreciate what this artist from so far away brought with his art:
“One fine day, it suddenly occurred to someone to say that Washington Barcala was a
painter’s painter; and in fact, none of us could have helped being attracted by the plastic
beauty of his works” (Francisco Farreras).
He arrived, alone, in a foreign city. Although not in the least talkative, but rather taciturn
and reserved, he made friends quickly in Madrid’s artistic world. His wife and mother of his
two children, María Elena Campo, would not arrive until some time later. His faithful
partner in strolls and needlework, she was often the one who actually did the sewing to join
the scraps of material that went into his paintings. Even during the few years they were so
far apart, Washington Barcala would send her carbon copy drawings of what he wanted her
to sew for him. Like a bridge made of thread and wood, his works were built on both sides
of the Atlantic.
A new society and lifestyle were giving rise to new forms of expression. Barcala, for one,
completely abandoned his landscapes and figuration - which would spring up again later in
a more expressionistic form - to work along more abstract lines. This change in his oeuvre
had begun ten years before he came to Madrid, but it was in this city that the most
characteristic features of his art were consolidated and fully developed.
The time Barcala had spent in the studio of an artist with enormous influence on the
Uruguayan artistic community, namely Joaquín Torres García, had not shown through until
then, but Latin constructivism had somehow remained latent in him. Nonetheless, it was not
until he was far from his country of origin, during this first stage of his artistic life in Madrid,
that this influence started to be visible in his work. He painted simple pictures with an
emphasis on the innate quality of the materials used - wood and paint -, depicting flat, sober,
geometric shapes composed in black and white. He worked with small formats, because he
could neither afford nor did he have room for large canvases - he lived and worked in a small
two-room apartment. Barcala’s art was serene, contained and humbly constructed, but he
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