"... an artist should not plan his work, but let it emerge." (GOMBRICH, 1982).

 

With a continuous and persevering work that denote his exhibitions in our province as his work abroad, Alberto Thormann has achieved a place and an image that are his own, planning a professional itinerary while letting spontaneously arise his artistic work.

 

The works in which he has been working for some time, show us certain modifications in the conception of space, the work of the forms, the color, with certainty the name of one of them, "Mirá que horizonte", confirms changes.    

 

There are new planes in his canvases, simpler, more net, more forceful, where the artist recognizes a maturity that takes him away at times, from the playful iconography that accompanied much of his previous works; It has "cleaned" the space, granting hierarchy to the forms due to their size or the less elaborate treatment, to the encounter of a certain monumentality.

 

At the same time he composes works of oil with pencil where he again assumes the game of fortuitous links, the veiled areas that only suggest what the spectator imagines and here the composition is enriched, returning to his tendency for the drawing and the subtleties, he unexpectedly constructs a work with all the variations of the monochrome, as in "Impresiones sobre blanco".

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With regard to the links of his image with the context, Thormann recognizes certain kinship with Surrealism, whose influence is seen in two features that distinguish his work.

 

The first feature is the freedom to create, a certain automatism leads him to execute elementary and very own movements; with an image that begins without a sketch with spontaneous strokes, where there is no previous plan, finds suggestions, creates associations, being in the last phase where the definitive work is built, based on the study of shapes and visual weights, to achieve the balance of the image, revealing his academic training here, from the "analysis of the plastic space".

 

The second feature has to do with the source from which the works emerge, the introspection that the artist said "... be the theme, ... although I do not have themes; I reflect, I think, but I do not work on specific topics. This solitary task of painting allows me to relate to the internal, to love, to the spiritual, to the path one makes to grow and the internal evolutions that one feels .. "

 

The aerial vision that in the image of Thormann confers the sensation of suspended forms, converts space into infinity, enlarges the borders and margins of his painting, this is visible in "Un ala en el Cielo", a large diptych, or in the oil "Despues de la tormenta". In the same way the space can appear concentrated, locating the "objects" in the margins as in "Levitation", where the deep red background becomes deep, causing a contained tension.

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Here it is also possible to notice the loose handling of a palette that always keeps the target in mind, holds blue, green or red with the same conviction, without forgetting the black line. The one that appears to mark the line, highlighting a chosen outline, is undoubtedly a legacy of the engraving from which it was expressed for a long time. The black line appears as cuts, as seams of the fragments, in a gesture that gives character to the form and subtly threads the way.

 

This is how it is to note that certain paradoxes remain in his work, from a meticulous work to another of great synthesis, from the suspended and cosmic gaze to the interiority that proposes a perforated background, the color - now more flat - also resolved in the extension of monochromatic variations; all resulting from a permanent exploration, a production that arises spontaneously and from a playful structure that sustains Thormann's plastic work. 

                                                          Sandra Marset