Adevor ABSTRACT

Adevor’s abstract painting resulted from his need to give a shape and color to his ideas, to his fantasy of geometric shapes, strong lines, and solid images, far away from the sensual lines of desire (nudes). He had to draw a structure before or after laying some splashes of color. These abstract colored compositions came from the subconscious of Adevor, the geologists who could read mountains, their composition and evolution, especially the Alps, how they were created, uplifted, folded and faulted in well-defined directions dictating a particular shape of rock outcrops and the vegetation invading them; volcanic ejections were also painted. Many canvasses make visible strata not only of geological inspiration but also coming from the stratigraphy of mental images, accrued by a life of observation of images, images of images. Adevor started abstract painting in Rome in 1958 with 3 small canvasses studied for a long time, as if he was scared of abstract ideas in a period when he was starting to paint figurative subjects, and use oil color for a large Christ resurrection and tempera and ink for nudes on paper, inspired by what he had seen in Rome’s museums and churches. Adevor paintings use the visual language of faulted and curved rocks depicted with either with natural colors of his passion for nature (rock and crystals) or the violent colors of his passion for the art of painting. Furthermore, one can see in some faulted and deep shadowed structures, elements of the human body, a subject that is never missing in Adevor painting. Painting or drawing abstract forms or shapes, started when Adevor had a large space in which to work gesturally, not on a small table where he had painted a variety of figuratives. It was in London, when his flat was almost empty where he produced white canvas with sprays of color and heavy black lines allowed to melts in a liquid support (water).  The pink spray used for a short time, both on figurative and abstract, was a fluorescent paint for road traffic signaling, while the black was the conventional black tempera. In Singapore for his abstract works Adevor used acrylics on very large canvasses laid on the floor. He confessed enjoying walking on his compositions, bare-footed and having paint splashes on his legs and arms.  When cleaning himself in the shower, he felt like painting himself. It was a very physical enterprise, totally removed by the concepts that were painted. All the time Adevor reaffirmed that he could see body’s elements in all his abstract canvas. This became clear in the two large figurative canvas composed contemporaneously to the pure abstract ones, perhaps the most dynamic and violent he ever produced. Adevor’s abstract paintings were often made using then artifice of adjusting the inclination of the canvas or paper, making straight and lateral adjustments, to allow the spread and runs of colors complementing the basic structure. The choice of colors was subconscious and casual. He preferred some colors to others, but in general he used all the spectrum, often in superimposed layers to enrich the tones. Another example of abstract that became a figurative work was the black and red canvas later named “Icarus” which Adevor could not avoid transform into a torso with wings. He also liked the myth of Icarus that continues to be true in modern society. Adevor  candidly says that he did not have any knowledge of works from contemporaneous abstract artists, except having seen pictures of Pollok and Kline, and a canvas of Vedova, Burri and Fontana at the Biennale di Venezia in 1948 (?). However, by his nature Adevor never advertised himself nor pushed the Paris’gallery that supported him to exhibit his work, noticing that the gallery was essentially searching recognized names on the international art market. Adevor never fought to compare his creativity with that of anybody else. He was aware to be conditioned by his upbringing, religion, philosophy, etc., of the society in which we all live are limited. We can conclude on Adevor mentioning that he needed to be surrounded by artworks often using his own creation to decorate his space, as he did in Honk Kong in 1984.