Ground and figure

2022 | Ciclo Gallery| Colective exhibition | Sucre 1073, Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Ground and Figure are ever-present notions in the works of Juan Batlle Planas. In 1960 he founded the Instituto Privado de Investigación de la Forma (Private Institute for Form Research) where he taught classes on this subject.

Ground and Figure are intertwined. The blurred backgrounds and the atmosphere of mystery appear from his first works. Undefined human-animal beings suspended, do they hold each other?

The cut-outs are made from a drawing on black cardboard.

Early on he resorts to the technique of cut-outs in the collages made between 1935 and 1940. Cut-outs of isolated images that are then composed in the manner of “exquisite corpses” or that he adds to other prints, many of which were made by the engraver Louis Poyet.

He invents his own cutting instrument: he inserts a Gillette between two pieces of green Meccano, which he then adjusts with a screw and nut. The perfection of the execution stands out. Throughout his life he compiles “image notebooks” with clippings of his interest.

Curator Alejandro María Correa