Infraction IV, 1979

Acrylic on canvas
© Virginia Jaramillo; courtesy the artist and Hales, London and New York. Photo by Ian Reeves.

Between 1969 and 1974, Virginia Jaramillo created a series known as the Curvilinear Paintings. Infraction IV is one of the earliest paintings in this body of work and is typical of the series' initial abstractions in its inclusion of large, rounded forms. The artist embarked on the series after a residency in Paris in 1965, which, as she recalled, “zipped open my brain,” and her abstractions were later included in the 1971 De Luxe Show in Houston’s Fifth Ward, one of the first racially integrated art exhibitions in the U.S. Jaramillo was the only woman and only Latina participant. Her experiences in Europe had solidified her interest in the Japanese concept of ma (literally, “gap” or “pause”), in which empty space is considered as important as occupied space. Jaramillo generated the resulting paintings through an extensive process involving dozens of sketches of a single line on paper measuring eight by ten inches. She then selected one drawing to transpose onto canvas. In most of these large-scale works, a single curved line extends across a monochromatic field from one edge of the canvas to another.