Alfonso Michel

Color is a distinctive element of Mexican culture and has commonly been tranferred to being resource of painting. No doubt there are extraordinary colorists in the history of Mexican art, but their chromatic references do not always come from an assimilation of a palette based on folklore and folk traditions. Alfonso Michel belonged mostly to this second group, because even though the issues at times concern festivals and festivities of the common people, the projection of color in his work comes from a more cultured dynamic. The artistic harmony that can be seen in his painting is the result of a preponderance of formal values, where color and composition carry out an important balancing act. In El eco del mar the personal sentiments of the artist are at work - like nostalgia - with a rereading of the classic in relation to the metaphysical hermetics, but with an individual coloristic interpretation that De Chrico could never have done in a similar way. The painting is part of the set of various works by this artist in the Blaisten Collection, and shows the maximum artistic values that Michel sought for his painting.