In this text written for an exhibition of works by Patricio de la O, the art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado reviews the artist’s painting from his student days until his return to Chile after living in exile from 1974 to 1978 during the early years of the military dictatorship. Mellado identifies three periods in this painter’s career: training (1965), detention (1972), and new beginning (1980). The text addresses the relationship between De la O’s painting and the “manchismo” of José Balmes, who was his teacher at the university. The works involve a “framing of the landscape” through the use of photographs assembled to create a controlled landscape based on “artificial transcription procedures,” which manipulate the planes systematically; that is, according to a “chromatic rationality.” In his text Pastor Mellado reviews the painting produced in the 1980s and concludes that De la O was going against the flow of the dominant trends of the period, including the so-called Promoción 80.   

The art critic and curator Justo Pastor Mellado (b. 1949) wrote this article on the painting of Patricio de la O for an exhibition at the Galería Arte Actual (Santiago, 1986). The artist had three solo exhibitions of his paintings at this gallery between 1984 and 1989.

Trained at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de la Universidad de Chile in the early 1960s, Patricio de la O (b. 1946) studied under the painters Iván Vial (1928–2016), Reinaldo Villaseñor (1925–1994), José Balmes (1927–2016), and Eduardo Martínez Bonati (b. 1930); the latter were also members of the Grupo Signo. During his time at university, he produced graphic art for advertising campaigns and for political propaganda pieces as a sideline to his art production. After the 1973 coup d’état he was imprisoned before going into exile. From 1974 to 1978 he lived in Buenos Aires where he worked as a graphic artist for Editorial IARA and at the Diario La Opinión (Jacobo Timerman’s newspaper), and as a painter at the well-known artist Luis Felipe Noé’s studio. [On the subject of Noé’s work, see the following in the ICAA Digital Archive: “De por qué Luis Felipe Noé (*) ya no es más pintor y sin embargo hace una exposición de pintura (autorreportaje)” (doc. no. 740623).]     

In 1980,  De la O once again exhibited his work in Chile at Serie del regreso, where he showed paintings and collages he’d produced between 1978 and 1980. The art historian Milan Ivelic (b. 1935) described this series as a synthesis of the artist’s experiences during the 1970s and 1980s; hence the “return” in the title of the exhibit referred to his return to the country as well as to the craft. At that time De la O developed a close working relationship with Pastor Mellado, who wrote about his work on more than one occasion. They did a series of interviews they planned to publish, but the project never came to fruition.

At a time when people were talking about conceptual art and neo-expressionist painting, De la O was focused on a rational, systematic sort of painting that retained a certain classicism, according to Pastor Mellado. [On the subject of the artist’s painting, see: “La manufactura del paisaje” (doc. no. 757713) by Mellado; and “Una objetividad esencial” (doc. no. 756798) by Balmes.]