Vallauris-Perthus 1969

Joaquim Rodrigo made Vallauris-Perthus with paint, and I suspect with printmaking techniques too, though you can’t quite put your finger on it. The colors are so earthy – browns and tans, punctuated by bold white and black. It feels like a snapshot of an artist's mind at work. The shapes and symbols are what get me. They seem both ancient and modern. There's this tall white shape like a sword and a square filled with radiating lines. Then there are the words Picasso and Giacometti scrawled casually across the surface. The brown background isn't uniform; it has subtle shifts in tone and texture. It gives the whole image a warm, handmade quality, like it was pulled from the earth itself. This piece reminds me of work by Roger Brown, with its flat planes, stylized forms, and personal iconography. Rodrigo's work leaves space for questions. It's a testament to the beauty of art that embraces ambiguity.