1990 - 1993
Oil on canvas / !95 cm x 130 cm / 1990
Oil on canvas / 195 cm x 130 cm / 1992
1994 was a very creative year. Rodríguez Amat was living in Barcelona until the summer. In June he settled in Empordà, an area in the north-west of Catalonia. During the first six months of that year, Rodríguez Amat painted a lot of works using mixed media on paper. Screen ink, gouache, acrylic and other materials as well as the incorporation of layers of paper, in the form of collages, offered him the possibility of work in which intuition directed the creative process.
These works, most of them of the same size -71 cm x 100 cm- have been painted with freely brushed backgrounds and gestured strokes. In most of these paintings the division between figures and background is clearly perceived.
Heads and legs mostly shaped the central part of the paintings. Sometimes words and graphic signs were introduced into the composition.
Tècnica mixta sobre paper / 100 cm x 71 cm / 1994
In these works Rodríguez Amat chose to break with dogmatic rules and also with the very conception of art.
Mixed media on paper / 71 cm x 100 cm / 1994
Mixed media on paper / 71 cm x 100 cm / 1994
The move to the Empordà produced a change of style in Rodríguez Amat's paintings. A new direction inspired by the area in which he settled. At first he continued working on paper, but soon the textures he started to use and the creative process induced him to return to oil techniques on wood panels.
After hearing Le boeuf sur le toit by the French composer Darius Milhaud, Rodríguez Amat was inspired to paint an extensive series of works around the image of an animal painted in the shape of a horrible beast, which he always called an ox.
Technically the oil colours were applied and mixed on the same surface of the wood panels with the handle of the brushes. The painter put the oil colours onto the panel, scratching the paint into the surface of the wood with the handle of the brush. This process conferred a rough and irregular texture to the surface of the paintings using a mixture of colours with a high sheen.
The series was started in the autumn of 1994 and continued until the end of 1997.
Oil on wood panel / 74 cm x 78 cm / 1995
Once again, a change in personal attitude inspired a new artistic path. A direction that once again demanded a reconsideration of the use of art materials. Figures and forms, half way between abstract and representative were drawn and structured with black lines. These characteristics determine the formal body of these paintings.
Deformed shapes, alluding to animals and to the human being at the same time, mould the representatives images of most of this works.
A richness and brightness of colour is apparent in all the paintings of that period. Colourful images in constantly changing shades and tints across the colour spectrum contrasted, specially with white, produce a chromatic outburst.
Though aware he was using well defined aesthetic principles in these works, the painter never tried to give them a cognitive form. Above everything he wanted to proclaim his absolute freedom in all these paintings.
Oil on wood panel / 122 cm x 81 cm / 1995
Images that have no specific conscious meaning fill the paintings with internal rhythms.
Oil on wood panel¡ / 81 cm x 122 cm / 1997
Broken woman / Oil on wood panel /122 cm x 81 cm / 1997
Although his central activity was painting, his deep reflections do not revolve around any doctrinal principle but around the cultural value of art itself. A dialogue between personal desire and the ghost of self-definition appears constantly in the painter's mind.