CATALUNYA

Alberto Garcia-Alvarez
Tim Melville
4 Winchester Street
Newton

The exceptionally big works in this exhibition are all called Catalunya , in English, Catalonia.

Were they named before or after the long-standing dispute over the independence of the region within Spain became a crisis? Either way they seem to reflect the conflict.

The large paintings are all in the veteran artist’s long established bold abstract manner involving wide areas of only two or three substantial colours. These works mainly have two strong colours in opposition sometimes with a distinct boundary line between them with more vivid colour lying under them and reappearing fiercely at the edges of the work.

The two largest elements in the paintings are opposed but related. A wide white area contains and presses powerfully on an area just off-white. A large black area pushes against an area of very dark grey. A heavy clouded brown area presses down on a black with both intruded on by an irregular of grey-white. Always there is a sense of pressure which works in a powerful abstract way but is open to functioning as metaphor.

There are three attractive smaller works in the exhibition. The strongest is Hector of Troy which has a shield-shaped bold element in metal. This polished form is battered and dented in a way that suggest damage in battle. It is a telling shape.

Hector was the greatest of all the warriors of Troy in their battles against the Greeks who invaded their territory in a vast fleet of ships. When Achilles, the undefeatable warrior, withdrew from the war in anger at his leader, King Agamemnon, claiming his favourite woman as spoils of war, Hector brought the Greeks to the edge of defeat. Yet he was human and Achilles was a demigod and when he returned to the fight he killed Hector in battle and ultimately Troy was taken and razed.

Electra belongs to the same family.  She brooded on Agamemnon’s sacrifice of her sister to get a fair wind to sail to Troy and the way her mother waited to kill him when he returned.

Then she required her brother to kill their mother. The concentrated little painting is a darkness surrounding and putting immense pressure on a disordered and quivering shape.

Small or large these paintings are stamped with the authority. Abstract they are but they go beyond design to provide real emotional impact.