Estructura móvil, cuadro nº 1 (Moving Structure, Picture No. 1)

Behind Estructura móvil, cuadro nº 1’s (Moving Structure, Picture No. 1) geometric, minimalist appearance lies an open work that needs viewer participation to achieve all its configurations. Gerardo Delgado’s starting point for the structure is a simple concept of elemental, basic-colour geometry. The frame is designed to take various combinations of pieces, multiplying the possibilities for intervention in the colour and form: the four small cubes and four large cubes can, depending on how they are set out, turn the piece into an apparently unchanging flat format, or into a flat plane broken up by gaps, while the colours can create contrast, monochromy, or harmony. The need for participation that runs through so much plastic art from the 1960s is applied in this case to constructivism of modular shapes. This is a kind of reflection on humans' capacity for changing their own environment using elements supplied by a medium clearly influenced by utopian forms taken from the design and architecture of modernity (the straight line, the right angle, the square, the cube). In 1970, referring to the intentions that dominated his work at the time, Delgado stated that: “What interests me, more than any possible meanings and interpretations of the work, is the intervention of the public. It gives the artistic act a significant 'didactic meaning'.”

Carmen Fernández Aparicio