Sobre Violeta

Argentinian-born painter Sarah Grilo (1919–2007) was one of the most influential Latin American artists of postwar abstract art.

She began her painting studies with Vicente Puig, a distinguished Catalonian artist, who trained her until 1943. Grilo later moved to Europe, where she lived in France and Spain from 1948 to 1950, before returning to Buenos Aires. In 1952, Grilo, along with noted art critic Aldo Pellegrini, formed the Grupo de Artistas Modernos de la Argentina (GAMA), which challenged general trends in the Argentinian art scene. Her husband, painter José Antonio Fernández-Muro, also became a member. 

The Dorsky’s Sobre Violeta, (c.1954-55) dates to when Grilo was working amongst GAMA artists, and is one of two works in the collection. Sobre Violeta illustrates her approach to geometric abstraction during the 1950s. She organized the lithograph in long, vertical rectangular forms. Short—and sometimes split—squares, and circles— either divided or whole are placed around a central axis, beginning in the left black circle, and divided and arranged slightly off-kilter. As indicated by the title, the background and dominant color of the composition is violet. Meanwhile, bright yellow draws the viewer's eye to opposite sides of the lithograph.

Responding in a 1954 interview regarding what was most fundamental to painting, Grilo stated, “‘Painting must be a manifestation of its current time, it holds the greatest potential of expressive power [and, more importantly,] it is the responsibility of each new generation of artists to disrupt what was created by their predecessors.” Grilo became one of the most influential Latin American painters of the twentieth century.