{"status":true,"msg":{"data":{"id":1818,"auction_id":4,"set_id":5,"lot_number":"94","artist":"Fernando Zóbel (1924 - 1984)","title":"Jucar XIX","starting_price":5000000,"signed_dated":"signed (lower left and verso) dated 1972","medium":"oil on canvas","size":"23 3/4\" x 23 3/4\" (60 cm x 60 cm)","property":null,"coa":null,"provenance":"Private Collection, Spain","exhibited":null,"literature":"De la Torre, Alfonso and Rafael Pérez-Madero. Fernando Zóbel:\nCatalogue Raisonné of Paintings (1946 - 1984). Madrid: Fundación\nAzcona, 2022. Listed as \"nº 72-54\" with full-color photograph and\npainting description on page 467.","write_up":"Cuenca was part and parcel of Fernando Zobel's \ncreative praxis. His first encounter with the city \nhappened in 1963, underlaid by his idea to \nestablish a museum that would house his collection of \npaintings in his Madrid abode. After a failed search for \na conducive place in Toledo, Zobel fortuitously found \nCuenca. On October 4, 1963, Zobel wrote to his American \nfriend, Paul Haldeman:<br /><br />\n\"My big project is a Museum of Spanish Abstract Art in \nthe city of Cuenca—two and a half hours from Madrid. \nIn the renowned \"Hanging Houses,\" which the kind_x0002_hearted, forward-looking local corporation has let me \nrent for thirty years at something like 1.50 dollars per \nannum. How nice for everybody! I have a feeling it is \ngoing to turn into one of the loveliest small museums \nin the world. As I will be owner, director, curator, \nacquisitions committee, patron, board of trustees and \ndictator, I rather think I shall have a lovely time.\"<br /><br />\nIn July 1963, Zobel established his residence at Cuenca. \nThe city would inspire myriad landscape paintings \nthat manifest Zobel's enigmatic yet sublime lyrical \nabstraction. \"Once he has decided to set up the \nMuseum of Abstract Art in Cuenca, his trips to this city \nare constant; for years, it will be on the road and in the \ncity that he will find most of his themes for landscapes… \nLittle by little, the city and its surrounding area take \npossession of the painter, and Cuenca fills his notebooks, \nhis pictures, and also his writing,\" his biographer Angeles \nVillalba Salvador succinctly notes.<br /><br /> \nZobel's brainchild, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español \nin Cuenca, would be formally established on June 30, \n1966. Pervaded with much jubilation, Zobel would \nelevate Cuenca as the beautiful muse of many of his \npaintings. Two of these series now form part of Zobel's \nmost coveted and highly imaginative and lyrical works: \n\"El Júcar,\" or The River Júcar, and \"La Vista,\" inspired by \nthe view from the window in his Cuenca studio.<br /><br />\nIn particular focus in this essay is the El Júcar series, to \nwhich the work at hand, titled Júcar XIX, belongs. The El \nJúcar was born from the 1971 works El lago (lake) and \nEl estanque (pond), which were based on his notes on \nthe lake located at Winchester College in Oxford, where \nhe attended a lunch for the members of the Oriental \nCeramic Society. Zobel would start working on the El \nJúcar in 1971 after carefully deliberating on a large-scale \nseries of works looking into the river ecosystem. Zobel \nchose the Júcar River, which flows through the towns of \nCuenca, Alcala del Jucar, Cofrentes, Alzira, Sueca, and \nCullera. As such, Cuenca's essence and landscapes took \ncenter stage. <br /><br />\nZobel's enthrallment at the sinuous paths of the Júcar \nand his marvel at the sight of his beloved Cuenca is \nevoked in the ethereal quality of Jucar XIX. We see in the \nrange of colors, from the siennas to dark browns and \neven the greys, the ebb and flow of the waters of the \nJúcar. In an interview in El Pais on March 3, 1982, Zobel \nshared glimpses of how the varying \"colors\" of the Júcar \nare reflected in his paintings of the river. \"I have often \nworked with issues of color, but always in the abstract,\" \nZobel says:<br /><br /><br />\n\"Actually, the starting point is the extremely unusual Júcar \nRiver as it flows through Cuenca, where it displays an array \nof colors the likes of which I have not seen elsewhere.\"<br /><br /><br />\nOne of the windows on the other side of Zobel's \napartment-cum-studio in Cuenca overlooked the mouth \nof the Júcar. The Júcar passes through the heart of \nCuenca, and so the river was enshrined in perpetuity \nin Zobel's psyche. Once again, Zobel gives prominence \nto the importance of one's memory and recollections, \nreveling in the power of lived experiences in rendering \nworks that palpably provide a window into his \nconsciousness and subconsciousness and the power of \nprofound introspection, resulting in pieces that wallow \nin poetic elegance. (Adrian Maranan)","lot_group":"PAINTING","lot_details_html":null,"alias":null,"hp":0,"bp":0.2016,"isWithdrawn":0,"accounting_hp":0,"userBid":5930,"isPaid":0,"userId":22,"lot_status":"UNSOLD","isDone":1,"bid_history_id":null,"reserve_price":null,"hammer_price":0,"fav":0},"image":[{"id":2029,"img_url":"https://leongallery.sgp1.digitaloceanspaces.com/v2/auction/4/5/lot/94.jpg","isFeatured":1}]},"increment":[5500000,6000000,6500000,7000000,7500000,8000000,8500000,9000000,9500000,10000000,11000000,12000000,13000000,14000000,15000000,16000000,17000000,18000000,19000000,20000000],"prev":93,"next":95,"count_bid":0,"bid_history":[],"tokenExpired":1}