Woman and a Birdcage 1965

Emilio Grau Sala made "Woman and a Birdcage" using paint, maybe oil, maybe something else, sometime before 1975. I can picture him in the studio, making this. Look at that palette! It’s like he's chasing after light itself: the hazy yellows, the saturated blues. He's throwing down color, letting it drip and blend. See how the birdcage emerges? You can sense him, almost fighting with the canvas, wiping away, adding, until the image appears. I think he's interested in the tradition of painting and what he can do with it. He's playing with the old masters, but also twisting it, making it new. I wonder if he looked at Bonnard at all. I see hints of him here, and hints of many others, too. Painting is always a conversation like that, with artists across time, inspiring each other. And for us, the viewers, each painting can be a world, a question, a feeling.