Sarah Grilo

SARAH GRILO (Buenos Aires, 1917 - Madrid, 2007)
"Eros and civilization", c. 1970.
Oil on canvas.
Presents an informative label on the back of the Juana Mordó Gallery (Madrid).
Signed in the lower left corner. Signed and titled on the back.
Measurements: 130 x 80 cm; 135,5 x 86,5 cm (frame).
Eros and civilization is presented as a densely stratified surface in which textual fragments, typographic signs and pictorial gestures are superimposed, evoking urban walls covered with torn posters, censored slogans and graffiti. The painting is articulated as a field of tension between order and disruption: partially legible words coexist with stains, glazes and impulsive strokes, generating an unstable reading that oscillates between the visual and the semantic. Far from illustrating a literal content, the title points to a symbolic confrontation between drive and norm, desire and control, which materializes in the constant friction between structure and chaos on the canvas.
Made around 1970, the work belongs to a stage of full maturity in Grilo's production, a period in which the artist returned to Madrid, being linked to the Juana Mordó gallery as a represented artist. During this stage her pictorial language was decidedly oriented towards the incorporation of the sign, the writing and the urban footprint as compositional elements. The artist transforms the wall into an archive and painting into a space of collective memory, anticipating visual strategies that decades later would be central to contemporary urban art.
Sarah Grilo (Buenos Aires, 1917 - Madrid, 2007) was a fundamental figure of international post-war abstraction. Initially trained with Vicente Puig, in 1952 she joined the Group of Modern Artists of Argentina, together with artists such as Tomás Maldonado and Enio Iommi, participating in exhibitions in key institutions in America and Europe and in the 1956 Venice Biennale. After obtaining a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961, he settled in New York, where his work evolved from post-cubist figuration towards a gestural abstraction enriched by the use of language and sign. He later lived in southern Spain, Paris and Madrid, where he settled definitively in 1985. His work is part of important international collections and has been revisited in recent exhibitions at MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitechapel Gallery, consolidating his place as a singular and anticipatory voice in 20th century abstract art.