Martelo (e Três Frutos) 1991

Julio Pomar made this painting, Martelo (e Três Frutos), with what looks like confident brushstrokes and a warm palette. It’s like he's not just depicting objects, but also the act of seeing them. You can see a still life struggling to emerge from a morass of browns and whites. Look at the way the white tablecloth is rendered – broken up by linear marks. The paint is thin, almost transparent in places, allowing the brown underpainting to peek through. It makes the whole image feel dynamic and alive. The bull’s head looming in the background is an inky mass, a dark presence presiding over this domestic scene. Pomar was part of a generation of artists exploring the boundary between abstraction and figuration. You can see the influence of Picasso or Braque in the way he breaks down forms and reconstructs them on the canvas. Ultimately, it’s the feeling of the painting, the unresolved tension between representation and pure form, that stays with you long after you’ve moved on.