Barrio Escalante, San José

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Raices, by Guido Sáenz. A muscular, botanical energy commands the foreground.

Guido Sáenz

RaicesInquire about availability

Year
2012
Technique
Oil/Canvas
Dimensions
103 × 145 cm
Status
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Palette
terracotta, golden ochre, indigo blue, sage green, off-white
Brushwork
Fluid and curvilinear brushstrokes outlining sinuous forms over a background of rhythmic vertical strokes.

Curatorial analysis

A muscular, botanical energy commands the foreground. The reddish trunk on the left, modeled in helical twists like a tensed tendon, directs the eye toward the forest floor, where a tangle of contorted roots spills forward in waves that evoke bones or petrified currents of water. This lower mass, painted in shades of grey, dark umber, and bone white, contrasts immediately with the strict verticality of the background, where dozens of slender trunks rise parallel toward the light like the strings of a colossal instrument.

The pictorial space splits into two optical velocities. In the distance, a curtain of thin trees vibrates in sunny yellows and ochres that dissolve the thickness of the grove, generating an almost mystical luminosity that seems to filter the heat of midday. In contrast, the matter in the foreground condenses and turns sinuous, nearly sculptural. Over a cut root sprouts a vegetal knot of pale fronds, articulated with the same nervous curve that dominates the soil, adding an accent of nascent life alongside the fallen timber.

This oscillation between the mineral, the animal, and the botanical gives the landscape an unsettling density. This is not the idyllic depiction of a tropical thicket, but an open anatomy of the jungle floor, where each root appears to claim its ground through violent yet rhythmic torsions. The painter balances this subterranean struggle with the serene upward pull of the background lines, allowing the canvas to breathe in the exact tension between the earthly weight of soil and the vertical call of light.

Raices

More works by Guido Sáenz

44 works

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