“Limited Spaces”, Armando Pedrosa – LaEscena

With the suggestive title “Spaces on the edge” Armando Pedrosa shows in the gallery Guillermina Caicoya de Oviedo a selection of pieces from 2017 that allows obtaining a broad and representative vision of his creation, noting the plastic possibilities of geometry, the main protagonist in his work. Coinciding with his exhibition «From the point to the line. From the line to the plane. From plane to space» at the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias, this exhibition favors the analysis and understanding of some of the author’s plastic assumptions. A good part of the contributions of his current work were already latent in the previous decade and we can see them in this exhibition, especially those referring to spatialism, the possibilities of perspective and its optical effects.

The baggage and curriculum of this artist from Oviedo is endless, with more than sixty years of creative career. Top-level writers and critics have endorsed his important contributions to plastic and visual culture. Few artists have reflections on the Nobel Prize, Camilo Jose Celafrom the Academic of Fine Arts Dario Villalbaor of javier utrayas well as the main referents of Asturian criticism, such as Javier Baron Y ruben suarez. His work is perfectly analyzed through these personalities, and his exhibition at the Guillermina Caicoya Gallery confirms some of his most significant contributions, many of them embryonic of his current proposal in Fine Arts. .

The History of Art recalls the importance that the search for beauty has had over time through mathematical rigor and compositional, formal and chromatic clarity. In contemporary art, the claim of a work of art that, beyond reaching transcendence through the representation of external referents, focuses on its intrinsic aspects is of special value. From the premises of avant-garde currents such as neoplasticism and constructivism, to some of the representatives of post-pictorial abstraction, such as Kenneth Noland either Frank Stellaour artist continues to provide infinite aesthetic and conceptual possibilities through geometry and continues to generate beauty from the basic elements of the configuration of the work of art.

In “Espacios al límite” the large-format oil paintings stand out, pieces of exceptional beauty that, through simplicity and formal cleanliness, provide serenity. Quiet pictorial presences that have the strength of a banner, of an emblem that champions the artist’s commitment to a work of art that is born from honesty. Through uniform color planes, the geometric shapes overlap and intertwine to form a compact body that seems to float. Spatial ambiguity, another of the peculiarities of this author’s creation, manifests itself in the loss of definition of the limits between some of the color planes. They are works to appreciate live because the singularity of the chromatic ranges is difficult to describe, their yellows, blues, grays and ivory incorporate ethereal effects, and the different finishes of the pictorial fields, only perceptible from close up, find their right measure. in the balance between smooth and rough surfaces.

Looking at the exhibition Armando Pedrosa the words of the artist and teacher come to mind Joseph Alberswhen he stated that abstraction is more real than nature and, like the German artist, he understands art from a rigorous planning and mathematical order, from the search and discovery of the essential, and from the harmonic relationships between scale, shape and color, giving each piece a beautiful spatialism that borders on perfection.

An excellent stainless steel sculptural piece is cut out in space with a great wealth of planes and rigorous harmony, leading whoever contemplates it to want to observe it from different points of view, it is a free-standing work that complements the series of collages present in the sample. Three vertical pieces stand out that make up an authentic triptych, they have generous formats and their chromatic sobriety and material simplicity -paper, cardboard and cardboard- allow us to scrutinize the worlds in which the artist is immersed. The original way of superimposing and combining the materials causes optical effects and singular perspectives, to which contributes the contrast in the delimitation of the planes, sometimes perfectly defined, others irregular, with an expressiveness caused by the gesture of manual tearing. There is a balance between mathematical rigor, always present in his work, and an emotional charge with which we intuit new drifts of this tireless creator. Euclidthe great Greek geometer, already told us how geometry was an extremely useful tool for expanding rational knowledge, now, in the hands of Armando PedrosaIt also serves to increase our emotional connection with the work of art.

“Limited Spaces”, Armando Pedrosa
Guillermina Caicoya Gallery
Principality Street, 11, Oviedo
Until February 10

[Artículo publicado en La Nueva España el 29 de diciembre de 2022]

santiago martinez He is a professor of Art History
saguazo@yahoo.es