Catálogo de la exposición - Fundación César Manrique

combined these features with extreme, dramatic colouring, clearly characteristic of Spanish
abstract painting of the age. The way he composed, in a linear and orderly manner, and the
range of greys, were qualities learnt and absorbed from Uruguayan constructivism - even
though he had rejected this tendency at first - but when he began to work in Spain he took
a new turn in his pictorial course, adding stark contrast and emotion in his use of black and
white. It was as though there were a bridge, from the very start, between what he brought
and what he found, between his culture and ours, as if he had found his place immediately
on arrival and a clarity of expression that would turn a common grounds into something that
was his and his alone. These were the early Madrid works, painted in the years when he
joined the Café Gijón circle, became friendly with architect Alberto Campo Baeza and held
his first exhibitions in the - then operational - Ruiz-Castillo Gallery.
From the eighties to the nineties: changes and materials
“If people only see the slats, they aren’t able to detach their view from the material. They
see the rod as a rod, they don’t see the composition as something sensitive, they don’t see
the wood as a colour in contrast to everything around it. Because I use rods, fabric or
wrapping paper as material, as texture and colour, in a composition to which I add paint”:
Washington Barcala in an interview with Cecilia Ceriani published in 1989.
Barcala created works with humble materials, which in some of his paintings, seen from a
certain vantage, remind us of Arte Povera. Wood, fabric, string, thread and paint were his
basic materials, which he sewed together or used to draw lines, build and form spaces,
create tension from geometric repetition.
He used to store his paints, material, wood, envelopes, napkins, anything he found and kept,
all in the same box. No longer a deliverer of boxes, he collected them. In his nightly strolls
after painting all day, he would stop to pick up odds and ends that he could use in his works.
These elements gradually became more varied and his compositions more complex. The
slats of wood began to leave more room for fabric and the splotches of paint were replaced
by drawings, sewed or painted on the backing. The simpler forms of the early years gave
way to “collage” like accumulations, centred around geometric figures. Triangles appeared
time and again in his paintings, doubled, trebled, quadrupled..., like symbols in a hieroglyph
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