Communication for the purpose of cultural promotion of artists included in the María Cristina Masaveu Peterson Foundation Collection protected by intellectual property rights. Reproduction, in whole or in part, or processing by any means, or transmission or transfer in any form, without the authorisation of the owner of the rights to the works, is prohibited.
© José María Sicilia, VEGAP, Madrid, 2024
Estación de montaña 2
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS
Author: José María Sicilia (Madrid, 1954)
Title: Estación de montaña 2
Year: 1984
Tecnique: oil on canvas
Size: 260 x 247 cm
Estación de montaña 2 [Mountain Station 2] was exhibited in the show 5 Spanish Artists, presented by the Ministry of Culture at the Artists Space in New York in 1985. The exhibition was part of an effort aimed at the international promotion of practitioners who – like Sicilia – advocated a return to painting as opposed to other artistic proposals, especially performance art.
With a gestural style that echoes the American abstract expressionism of the forties and fifties as well as the work of the new German expressionists of the eighties, in this painting Sicilia portrays a mountain landscape viewed during a trip to the snow. This image was also a continuation of a set of urban landscapes reflecting his experiences in Paris, where he lived for a period of time. With regard to the series entitled Estaciones de montaña [Mountain Stations], Quico Rivas stated in the catalogue for the New York exhibition that their “harsh abstract backgrounds […], forcibly dislocated by suggestive perspectives” stood out in particular. “The painter’s resources,” Rivas continues, “seem to multiply. Everything is possible: the deceptive depth of a glittering snowy background; the blacks and greens, transparent like the ghostly gauze of twilight urban visions…”.
In all likelihood, Estación de Montaña 2 was already in a private collection after having been on display at the Fernando Vijande Gallery in Madrid in 1984. It was acquired by the Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson at the Alcalá Subastas auction house on 28 October 2020 (lot 403).