Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work occupies a unique place in the history of contemporary Chilean art. Over the course of more than seven decades, his practice has spanned ceramics, drawing, painting, pastel, wood, enamel, and digital media. Each of these techniques has introduced specific working conditions and reactivated lessons the artist learned from past experiences. This continuity reveals a sustained exploration of the relationship between body, matter, and time, developed through surfaces that receive, channel, and transform the gesture.<\/p>\n This essay proposes a material reading of this trajectory, understanding materiality <\/em>not as a set of technical procedures, but as the field within which the meaning of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work is organized. This field encompasses the resistance of the supports, the pressure of the tools, the density of color, strategies for constructing volume, and the duration inherent in each procedure. From this perspective, technical decisions also shape the configuration of the figures, their silences, and the ways they occupy the pictorial space. Ceramics train the hand to recognize weight and internal tension; drawing provides a structure; the palette knife displaces and shapes the pigment; pastel brings the hand closer to the support; and the digital interface expands the possibilities for superimposition, correction, and recomposition of the image.<\/p>\n Surface, edge, volume, and silence constitute a conceptual vocabulary that recurs throughout this essay: the surface receives the body\u2019s actions and reveals the effects of the work; the edge regulates the relationship between figure and ground, contains the material, and lends consistency to the presence; volume preserves the tactile memory of ceramics and is projected onto the plane through modeling, gradation, and contour; and silence emerges in areas of indefiniteness, in the distance between bodies, and in the expressive restraint of figures whose identity remains suspended. These four concepts or dimensions of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work span diverse techniques and periods. In this sense, one of the central questions guiding this research is how to interpret an extensive and technically heterogeneous body of work without fragmenting it into autonomous stages or reducing it to a linear evolutionary narrative. In light of this difficulty, this essay proposes understanding Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s career as a material biography, in which each technique leaves a mark that is not exhausted at the moment of its production but remains available to be reactivated over time.<\/p>\n The methodology of this research combines a visual and material analysis of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work with the study of primary and secondary sources. These include conversations with the artist, interviews, letters, press clippings, exhibition catalogs, and other documents that form part of the Il Posto Foundation Archive, as well as critical and historiographical texts. The intersection of these materials allows us to examine Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work from different perspectives: from the intimacy of the studio and the memory of the creative process to its circulation within the national and international art world.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chapter I<\/strong><\/p>\n Echoes of Interpretation: Critique, Circulation, and the Art World<\/strong><\/p>\n Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work has been interpreted and discussed by local and international art critics over the course of more than six decades. These interpretations, produced at diverse times and in varied contexts, form a field of reception that allows us to observe how the artist\u2019s work has been understood and valued within the art world. Beyond the discursive variations characteristic of each era, a significant portion of this reception has emphasized formal, iconographic, historical, and social aspects, though it has also addressed the materiality of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work\u2014particularly in relation to color, modeling, impasto, contour, and the tools employed by the artist. This chapter traces the gradual emergence of this focus on material processes and establishes the critical context from which we will examine the relationship between gesture, surface, and time in Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s first solo exhibitions date back to the mid-1950s. Dibujo<\/em>, presented in 1954 at the Chilean-North American Institute of Culture, was followed by two ceramic exhibitions held at Galer\u00eda Taller 14 and Galer\u00eda Beaux Arts2<\/a><\/sup>Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, \u201cRicardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u201d, in Artistas Visuales Chilenos<\/em>, accessed August 18, 2026, https:\/\/www.artistasvisualeschilenos.cl\/658\/w3-printer-40296.html<\/a><\/span>. A decade later, the artist\u2019s paintings entered the international art scene thanks to the exhibition The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Painting in the 1960s<\/em>, a joint project of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Cornell University. To prepare for this exhibition and its accompanying publication, Thomas M. Messer, an art historian and then-director of the Guggenheim, traveled through eight Latin American countries in 19643<\/a><\/sup>William H. MacLeish, foreword to Thomas M. Messer and Cornell Capa, The Emergent Decade: Latin American Painters and Painting in the 1960s<\/em>, New York, Cornell University Press, 1966, p. ix; Thomas M. Messer, introduction to the same volume, p. xiii.<\/span>. During a three-day visit to Santiago, and thanks to a recommendation from painter Jorge Elliott\u2014then director of the Institute of Plastic Arts at the University of Chile\u2014he visited Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s studio. Yrarr\u00e1zaval was included in the project and became the only Chilean artist to whom the exhibition catalog dedicated an individual profile.<\/p>\n In a letter sent to Elliott from Lima on September 10, 1964, Messer distinguished the works created by Yrarr\u00e1zaval in the 1950s\u2014which he linked to the painting of Nicolas de Sta\u00ebl\u2014from those produced at the beginning of the following decade. \u201cFrom the early 1960s,\u201d he wrote, \u201cpossibly influenced by his experience as a ceramist, [Yrarr\u00e1zaval] seemed to arrive at his own solutions in form and color that clearly foreshadowed his current phase\u201d4<\/a><\/sup>Thomas M. Messer, letter to Jorge Elliott, Lima, September 10, 1964, in Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval: 1952\u20132014<\/em>, Santiago, Ediciones y Producciones Foramen Acus Ltda., 2014.<\/span>. Here, Messer suggests a continuity between Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s experience as a ceramist and his pictorial work, positioning ceramics as a precursor to certain solutions in form and color present in his painting. He then refers to the latent figuration, the pre-Columbian references, and the color palette of this work:<\/p>\n \u201cHis work is abstract, although the female form (which he explores almost obsessively in his drawings) seems to underlie his images. The pre-Columbian and indigenous connotations cannot be overlooked. These are evoked in part by forms that bear a distant resemblance to ceramics, but even more so by the luminous, sun-scorched colors that make up his palette and enliven his surfaces. It would be difficult to imagine that such a painting could have originated in Paris or New York. Yrarr\u00e1zaval is manifestly\u2014though unintentionally\u2014Latin American, and he achieves that identity without pictorialism, through purely formal means and from within”5<\/a><\/sup>Messer, letter to Elliott, September 10, 1964.<\/span>.<\/p>\n Messer\u2019s interpretation links the color in Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s painting to the construction of a Latin American identity. The phrase \u201cbring his surfaces to life\u201d also assigns color a constructive function, linked to the painting\u2019s internal energy and to the way in which the forms relate to one another within the pictorial plane. This analysis thus focuses on the visible results of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work, without addressing the tools used to create it or its physical composition. This observation allows us to pinpoint the specific scope of his interpretation and, at the same time, to recognize the material issues it leaves unresolved.<\/p>\n The photographic and textual profile created by Cornell Capa for the exhibition catalog The Emergent Decade <\/em>adds a temporal dimension to this interpretation. Capa refers to Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s journey through the highlands of Peru and Bolivia in the early 1960s, to the subsequent suspension of his painting practice\u2014which lasted approximately three years\u2014and to the gradual return of the colors of the Andean landscape to his work6<\/a><\/sup>Cornell Capa, profile of Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, in Messer and Capa, The Emergent Decade,<\/em> pp. 74\u201375.<\/span>. Color thus emerges as a visual experience retained and reactivated after a period of settling. Capa\u2019s interpretation thereby establishes a relationship between territory, memory, and the pictorial surface, which we will revisit in the next chapter of this essay, where we will examine Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s travels as part of a material and sensory formation.<\/p>\n A letter from Jorge Elliott to Thomas Messer, sent on April 15, 1965, reaffirms certain points of this interpretation. Elliott characterizes Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work as decidedly pictorial and observes in it \u201cfigures that underlie its abstraction, simplified into elementary forms, earthy like Chim\u00fa pottery or striped like indigenous textiles\u201d7<\/a><\/sup>Jorge Elliott, letter to Thomas M. Messer, Santiago, April 15, 1965, reproduced in Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval: 1952\u20132014<\/em>.<\/span>. His description thus acknowledges a restrained figuration associated with ceramic, textile, and pre-Columbian references, linked to two qualities of the pictorial surface: the earthy compactness of the forms and their rhythmic division by lines8<\/a><\/sup>Elliott uses \u201cChim\u00fa vessels\u201d to refer to a pottery tradition from the northern coast of Peru characterized by black ceramics and mold-based production. The term \u201cstriped indigenous textiles\u201d remains open-ended and alludes to a visual organization based on stripes. See Larco Museum, \u201cChim\u00fa,\u201d accessed August 18, 2026, https:\/\/www.museolarco.org\/exposicion\/exposicion-permanente\/exposicion-en-linea\/culturas-del-antiguo-peru\/chimu\/<\/a><\/span>. Once again, form, color, and cultural identity appear at the center of the reflection. Furthermore, in both Elliot\u2019s and Capa\u2019s commentaries, the references to pottery and the surface provide an initial vocabulary for delving deeper into the material dimension of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s pictorial work.<\/p>\n Among the works that may have inspired these early interpretations, we can highlight the painting Presencia <\/em>(\u201cPresence\u201d) (1964) (Fig. 1). In this work, the rectangular fields, variations in opacity, and concentration of earthy tones organize a central form: a figure that remains contained within\u2014or even integrated into\u2014the painting\u2019s architecture, situated between the vertical line descending from the upper field and the chromatic block located in the lower area. On the other hand, in Cabeza <\/em>(\u201cHead\u201d) (1969) (Fig. 2), the horizontal bands and the vertical axis direct this organization toward a more recognizable anthropomorphic structure. The expanse of the red and violet fields evokes the experience of the Andean landscape while simultaneously grouping its sections around a frontal presence. These two works allow us to observe how, in Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s early paintings, the figure begins to take shape through chromatic planes, their interruptions, and shifts in density.<\/p>\n Figure 1. Ricardo Yrarrazaval, Presencia<\/em>, 1964<\/p><\/div>\n Figure 2. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Cabeza<\/em>, 1969.<\/p><\/div>\n By the mid-1970s, critical reception of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work began to shift its focus toward the techniques employed in the construction of the image. The first traceable text that explicitly attests to this shift is the one written by art critic Nelly Richard for the Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval Pastel Exhibition<\/em>, held at Galer\u00eda \u00c9poca in Santiago in April 1976. There, the author argues that \u201ctwo artistic techniques are specific to [Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s] work as factors of (suggestion): modeling and the gradation of values\u201d9<\/a><\/sup>In this context, modeling <\/em>refers to the creation of a sense of volume through transitions of light and shadow; gradation of values<\/em> refers to the progressive shift between tonal intensities. Nelly Richard, untitled text, in Exposici\u00f3n de pasteles de Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, Santiago, Galer\u00eda \u00c9poca, April 1976, n.p., exhibition catalog, Nemesio Ant\u00fanez Foundation Archive<\/span>. Richard observes how these techniques are brought to life through oil and pastel, a new medium that allows the artist to reinterpret previously used techniques and alter the degrees of definition in the figures.<\/p>\n The vocabulary employed by Richard focuses on the way in which Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s painting constructs volume and manages the transition between different tonal intensities, emphasizing how material techniques directly contribute to the gradual emergence of the bodies. His interpretation relates modeling and gradation to a tension that operates by \u201ccombining (…) opacity and transparency\u201d\u2014terms that describe distinct effects of visibility, that is, how certain areas acquire consistency while others fade or remain suspended. The critique thus shifts from the material dimension of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work toward its optical effects. The composition of the pastel, the characteristics of the paper, the fixation of the pigment, and the physical constitution of the layers of paint remain, however, issues yet to be explored through the analysis of other works and documentary sources.<\/p>\n In De cuello y corbata <\/em>(\u201cWith Collar and Tie\u201d) (1976) (Fig. 3), a dry pastel on paper created around the same time as Richard\u2019s text, one can observe the relationship between modeling, gradation, opacity, and transparency that the author discusses. There, the gradual color transitions blur the features of the human face, while the clothing\u2014the shirt and tie\u2014is rendered in compact, saturated, and well-defined chromatic areas. Volume is concentrated in the head, neck, and shoulders, especially in the striped tie, which introduces a clear axis that anchors the composition. The pastel thus distributes varying degrees of presence. The technique organizes the tension between the indeterminacy of the body and the firmness of public appearance.<\/p>\n Figure 3. Ricardo Yrarrazaval. De cuello y corbata<\/em>, 1976<\/p><\/div>\n In 1977, Yrarrazaval\u2019s participation in the group exhibition Contemporary Chilean Painting<\/em>, held at the Las Condes Cultural Institute, gave rise to another set of critical interpretations. In the exhibition catalog, art historian and critic V\u00edctor Carvacho Herrera described the work titled Los blandos sue\u00f1os de Elvira<\/em> (\u201cElvira\u2019s Soft Dreams\u201d) (1975) (Fig. 4) in the following terms:<\/p>\n \u201cThe figure lies slumped in an armchair. Through a play on perspective distortions\u2014the arms in foreshortening and the legs magnified by an imaginary camera lens\u2014the figure achieves an obsessive presence. The dreamlike quality is accentuated by the shadow cast by the armchair and the sleeping \u2018Venus.\u2019 The exquisite and superlative use of pinks and greens in the upholstery borders on realistic preciousness”10<\/a><\/sup>V\u00edctor Carvacho Herrera, \u201cPintura contempor\u00e1nea chilena,\u201d in Pintura contempor\u00e1nea chilena, <\/em>Santiago, Instituto Cultural Las Condes, 1977, p. 20.<\/span><\/p>\n Carvacho\u2019s text focuses on perspective, foreshortening, proportions, shadow, and chromatic organization. The \u201cimaginary photographic lens\u201d allows him to explain the enlargement of the legs and the visual pressure the body exerts on the foreground. The shadow outlines the armchair and defines the figure\u2019s contour, while the pink and green stripes of the upholstery organize the volume through a continuous sequence that envelops the object. Carvacho\u2019s reference to \u201cchromatic variations\u201d may serve as the starting point for a material reflection on the way in which oil paint constructs densities, transitions, and different textures on the pictorial surface.<\/p>\n In the same catalog in which this text by Carvacho appeared, the critic Giorgio Vomiero stated that Yrarr\u00e1zaval \u201cportrayed the faceless man of the big cities, the urban man without identity\u201d11<\/a><\/sup>Giorgio Vomiero, \u201cPl\u00e1stica de hoy en Chile\u201d in Pintura Contempor\u00e1nea Chilena, <\/em>Santiago, Instituto Cultural Las Condes, 1977, p. 30.<\/span> This formulation directs the reader toward the social and iconographic meaning of the artist\u2019s painting, foreshadowing an issue that would become increasingly relevant in later writings on his work. Like Carvacho\u2019s, this text reflects the predominance of formal and thematic categories characteristic of the critical reception of the period, along with an emerging focus on color and the visual constitution of the pictorial surface. The material reading we propose in this essay takes up these indications and links them to specific techniques that Yrarr\u00e1zaval developed in his studio.<\/p>\n Figure 4. Ricardo Yrarrazaval, Los blandos sue\u00f1os de Elvira<\/em>, 1975<\/p><\/div>\n The interpretations we have just reviewed circulated within a heterogeneous art scene, in which the return of figurative painting coexisted with the proliferation of visual practices that experimented with the body, photography, printmaking, everyday objects, spatial interventions, and publications12<\/a><\/sup>Around 1976 and 1977, the figurative work of Roser Bru, Juan D\u00e1vila, Benjam\u00edn Lira, Francisco Smythe, and Yrarr\u00e1zaval coexisted with the body art and objects of Carlos Leppe; the graphic, photographic, and editorial explorations of Eugenio Dittborn, Catalina Parra, and Ronald Kay; the photography of Carlos Altamirano; and the printmaking of Luz Donoso and Eduardo Vilches. See Centro Nacional de Arte Contempor\u00e1neo Cerrillos, \u201cGaler\u00edas de arte en dictadura\u201d, October 17, 2018, https:\/\/centronacionaldearte.cultura.gob.cl\/glosario\/galerias-de-arte-en-dictadura\/<\/a>; and Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, \u201cNelly Richard (1948),\u201d Memoria Chilena<\/em>, https:\/\/www.memoriachilena.gob.cl\/602\/w3-article-92611.html<\/a><\/span>. Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s continued engagement with the fields of painting and figuration\u2014particularly human figuration\u2014must be situated within this broader context, in which galleries, catalogs, and the press provided spaces for circulation and discussion. It was precisely in this context that art historians Gaspar Galaz and Milan Ivelic published an article in the journal Aisthesis <\/em>that documented how the artist understood his own practice. There he stated: \u201cI think by painting because I don\u2019t know how to think any other way. That\u2019s the truth!\u201d He described a process of drawing, erasing, and the gradual emergence of form13<\/a><\/sup>Gaspar Galaz and Milan Ivelic, \u201cLa pintura: su candente realidad\u201d, in\u00a0 Aisthesis<\/em>, no. 9 (1975\u201376), p. 190.<\/span> \u2014in which the image arose as a product of the work and each painting opened up the possibilities for the next. Shaping, refining, erasing, defining, and starting over thus formed a continuous process that organized the relationship between surface, figure, and identity; and thought took place in the practical relationship with the support and was verified through successive decisions.<\/p>\n During the early 1980s, figures from urban and workplace settings took on a more explicit presence in Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work. While works such as De cuello y corbata <\/em>(1976) or El pragm\u00e1tico visitante <\/em>(\u201cThe Pragmatic Visitor\u201d) (1974) (Fig. 5) already contrasted the definition of attire with the distortion of the face, problematizing the relationship between identity, public appearance, and social convention14<\/a><\/sup>El pragm\u00e1tico visitante<\/em> won first prize in the painting competition held by the Colocadora Nacional de Valores in 1975. See Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural, \u201cEl pragm\u00e1tico visitante\u201d, SURDOC<\/em>, record 2-620, accessed August 18, 2026, https:\/\/www.surdoc.cl\/registro\/2-620<\/a>.<\/span>, in the artist\u2019s later paintings the isolated figure transforms into a collective typology. This is the case in Circuito Cerrado <\/em>(\u201cClosed Circuit\u201d) (1983) (Fig. 6), where two men in suits and ties traverse the urban space as anonymous bodies, distinguished only by the ways in which they occupy and stretch the pictorial surface. A horizontal strip crosses their faces and links their bodies within a shared atmosphere, reinforcing the serial nature of these presences.<\/p>\n Figure 5. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, El pragm\u00e1tico visitante,<\/em> 1974.<\/p><\/div>\n Figure 6. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Circuito Cerrado<\/em>, 1983<\/p><\/div>\n In the works produced by Yrarr\u00e1zaval during this period, contingency manifests itself in the stiffer lines of the clothing, the loss of definition in the faces, and the appearance of bodies whose presence oscillates between volume and blurring. Galaz and Ivelic refer to this in their book Chile, arte actual<\/em>, published in 1988. In examining Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work, they identify \u201csimulatory or distorting strategies\u201d that produce varying degrees of resemblance. Returning to the example of El pragm\u00e1tico visitante<\/em>, they observe that the shirt retains an unmistakable identity, while the neck and head lose that sense of clarity. The authors link this distribution to an identity crisis externalized in social rituals\u2014\u201cclothing as fashion and status\u201d\u2014and urban conventions15<\/a><\/sup>Gaspar Galaz and Milan Ivelic, Chile, arte actual<\/em>, Valpara\u00edso, Ediciones Universitarias de Valpara\u00edso, 1988, pp. 285\u2013286.<\/span>.<\/p>\n Galaz and Ivelic\u2019s reflections on Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work also address its material dimension. Indeed, the authors define this painting, \u201cin its craftsmanship and impasto,\u201d as \u201can autonomous signifier in its physicality,\u201d thereby highlighting the painting\u2019s physical and manual presence, perceptible in the way the pigment sustains volume and directs light16<\/a><\/sup>Galaz and Ivelic, Chile, arte actual<\/em>, p. 286.<\/span>. This interpretation also refers to the modeling achieved with the palette knife and to how forms \u201care concealed or revealed\u201d through meticulous control of light and shadow, giving rise to \u201cintense corporeal forms\u201d and \u201cvolumetric images that invite touch.\u201d The apparent tactility intensifies the figure\u2019s presence while its distortion destabilizes its identity, as if Yrarr\u00e1zaval were seeking to underscore the distance between a corporeality close to the sense of touch and a face that eludes identification. From this perspective, the pictorial surface also contributes to the undermining of identity. This integrates the social reading with the concrete conditions of the image and grants the material an active role in the production of meaning.<\/p>\n In 2002, art historian Pedro Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, then director of the School of Art at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, revisited some of these issues in \u201cThe Aesthetics of Silence,\u201d a text written for the exhibition Retrospective: 50 Years. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, presented at the Fundaci\u00f3n Telef\u00f3nica Art Gallery. The temporal distance afforded by the retrospective allowed him to survey fifty years of the artist\u2019s work and connect techniques developed at different times, among which he highlighted the \u201congoing work on defining contours,\u201d through which Yrarr\u00e1zaval created contrasts \u201cbetween the planes of a single figure, and between the figure and its background\u201d17<\/a><\/sup>Pedro Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cLa est\u00e9tica del silencio\u201d, in Retrospectiva 50 a\u00f1os. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, Santiago, Sala de Arte Fundaci\u00f3n Telef\u00f3nica, 2002, pp. 6\u20137.<\/span>. Like Galaz and Ivelic, Celed\u00f3n also refers here to the artist\u2019s work with the palette knife, noting that \u201cin his ceramics, it is the palette knife that delineates, polishes, extracts the material, and displaces it,\u201d while in his painting this tool \u201cachieves shading, volume, and depth.\u201d The author also notes that his planes are constructed on \u201csurfaces that are never impastoed. They contain little paint, and all of it has been dragged and spread under pressure\u201d18<\/a><\/sup>Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cLa est\u00e9tica del silencio\u201d, pp. 6\u20137.<\/span>. This observation defines pictorial corporeality as the result of the displacement of pigment, the blending of colors, and the control of transitions, while also clarifying the scope of the \u201cthickness\u201d already recognized by Galaz and Ivelic: the sensation of body arises from pressure, dragging, and the modulation of color; the surface presents the result of these operations and preserves the differences in density necessary to sustain the image.<\/p>\n In his text, Celed\u00f3n characterizes Yrarr\u00e1zaval as an \u201cintense explorer of his silences\u201d and recognizes in his figures \u201ca space of indefiniteness, left to the viewer\u2019s interpretation\u201d19<\/a><\/sup>Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cLa est\u00e9tica del silencio\u201d, p. 7.<\/span>. Silence thus takes on a material form in the areas where the pigment loses definition, where the edge is interrupted, and the volume remains suspended. While in Sobre el hombro <\/em>(\u201cOn the shoulder\u201d) (1984) (Fig. 7) the modeling of the face coexists with the precision of the glasses, the neck, and the tie, in A media voz <\/em>(\u201cIn a low voice\u201d) (1984) (Fig. 8) a horizontal strip crosses the body and blurs the boundaries of the upper area. Celed\u00f3n identifies this technique again in Estrategias y pron\u00f3sticos <\/em>(\u201cStrategies and forecasts\u201d) (1983), where he notes \u201chalf-erased faces\u201d and a metallic tie that is \u201cabsolutely defined, immaculate.\u201d The pigment, the edge, and the modeling determine which elements take on presence and which remain on the threshold of appearing. This indeterminacy opens up a space for the gaze and offers the viewer the possibility of actively participating in the construction of the figure.<\/p>\n Figure 7. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Sobre el hombro<\/em>, 1984.<\/p><\/div>\n Figure 8. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, A media voz<\/em>, 1984.<\/p><\/div>\n A review of all these critical texts on Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work allows us to outline an intermittent line <\/em>of interpretation<\/em>. Richard was the first to identify the specific techniques used in this artist\u2019s work during the 1970s; a decade later, Galaz and Ivelic linked the physical dimension of his painting to the production of social meaning; and, well into the 2000s, Celed\u00f3n emphasized this point by referring to the tools employed by the artist and their constructive effects. The contributions of all these authors allowed a critical discourse initially focused on form, color, and the identity of the painting to evolve toward a more complex interpretation, attentive to pressure, dragging, modeling, and the definition of contours. In the following chapters, we will attempt to delve deeper into this particular line of interpretation, examining how volume, edge, and silence constitute the material conditions through which Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s figures not only acquire presence but also begin to lose it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chapter II<\/strong><\/p>\n Biography of Matter: Training, Travel, and Sensitivity to the Edge<\/strong><\/p>\n Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s career can be read as a material biography, understood not as a succession of techniques or styles, but as a sustained process of training the eye and the hands through drawing, ceramics, and painting. This process follows a precise sequence: drawing organizes the structure; clay provides a tactile understanding of volume; and the palette knife transfers operations of pressure, dragging, and modeling to the canvas. Each experience introduces specific conditions that shape the artist\u2019s sensibility and a way of understanding form that is projected into the subsequent stages of his work.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s early training outside Chile proved decisive in consolidating this relationship with the material. In 1952, at the age of twenty, the artist traveled to Europe and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, where he remained for nearly a year and was exposed to an educational approach centered on the rigor of academic drawing. He then spent about eight months in Paris, where he took art classes, visited museums, and continued to draw. The value of these stays lies in the structural discipline that the artist acquired and maintained throughout his career. In a conversation with art critic Jos\u00e9 Zalaquett, he put it clearly: \u201cFor me, drawing, composition, and structure have always been fundamental. I\u2019m also very interested in volume\u201d20<\/a><\/sup>Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, conversation with Jos\u00e9 Zalaquett, in Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval: 1952\u20132014<\/em>, Santiago de Chile, Ediciones y Producciones Foramen Acus Ltda., 2014, pp. 24 and 26<\/span>.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s relationship with ceramics, on the other hand, began in Chile. Upon his return from Europe, he began working with this material and, together with the sculptor Ra\u00fal Valdivieso, installed a high-temperature kiln in the house-studio where he lived with his wife, Isabel Echenique. The first pieces he created were utilitarian, and their sale allowed him to financially sustain the studio while he continued to paint. In 1957, he traveled with his family to Vallauris, a town in southern France with a tradition of pottery, where he stayed for several months and was able to delve deeper into this craft he had already begun21<\/a><\/sup>Yrarr\u00e1zaval, conversation with Zalaquett, pp. 24\u201325. Ra\u00fal Valdivieso\u2019s identification as a sculptor, the founding of the ceramics workshop in Chile, and his subsequent further study in Vallauris are also discussed in Waissbluth, Grandes artistas contempor\u00e1neos chilenos. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, Santiago, Ediciones Cecilia Palma, 2012, pp. 14 and 58\u201360.<\/span>, without ever stopping drawing (Fig. 9).<\/p>\n Figure 9. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Untitled<\/em>, 1957. In the handwritten note: My 11-month-old son Ricardo, Vallauris, May 1957.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n The experience of working with the potter\u2019s wheel established a physical relationship with volume. Yrarr\u00e1zaval recalls that the mass of clay, shaped by his hands, \u201crose and took on form, almost magically,\u201d and adds: \u201cIt\u2019s very special to feel it in your hands. Perhaps my attraction to that effect is the source of the evolution toward volume that occurs in my paintings.\u201d This is even reflected in the treatment of the disfigured faces that appear in his later work: \u201cThose distortions (…) one could say they yearn for the moisture, texture, and opaque sheen of the clay22<\/a><\/sup>Yrarr\u00e1zaval, conversation with Zalaquett, pp. 26\u201327.<\/span>“.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s account precisely defines the transition from clay to pigment. The memory of ceramics becomes a manual skill that requires recognizing thicknesses, maintaining a form, altering a surface, and preserving the internal consistency of the body. It is the palette knife that seems to enable this continuity within Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s painting studio. Art critic Gaspar Galaz identifies in his works from the 1960s a \u201cmaterial density\u201d produced precisely by the \u201crigorous work of the spatula\u201d and notes that while painting, the artist analyzes \u201cthe possibilities that different spatulas offer for organizing the material on the surface of the canvas.\u201d According to the author, this exploration of the possibilities of the palette knife is also linked to\u2014or reflected in\u2014the treatment of faces in Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s later paintings, where the material displaces or blurs certain features and regulates the distance between the focused areas and the blurred areas. Even in later stages of the artist\u2019s work, it is possible to recognize how the screen-printing squeegee extends this principle of distribution and dragging across the surface23<\/a><\/sup>Gaspar Galaz C., \u201cLa soledad del joven pintor\u201d, foreword to Ver\u00f3nica Waissbluth, Grandes artistas contempor\u00e1neos chilenos. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, p. 8. For the subsequent use of the screen-printing squeegee, see Waissbluth, p. 52.<\/span>.<\/p>\n In line with these reflections, Pedro Celed\u00f3n also describes the spatula as a tool that forces one to \u201crub, scrape, and drag the material,\u201d noting that, in his painting, Yrarr\u00e1zaval places two separate colors and then unites them\u2014that is, he works with \u201ca small amount of paint\u201d that has been \u201cdragged and spread under pressure\u201d24<\/a><\/sup>Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cLa est\u00e9tica del silencio\u201d, \u00a0p. 7.<\/span>. This procedure produces shading, volume, and depth through the precise application of pigment. Dragging, compressing, uniting, and removing are thus fundamental operations in the construction of the image.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s 1960 journey through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and northern Chile introduces a new dimension to this material biography. For four months, the artist traveled through mountain villages without taking notes, at a time when his relationship with painting was in crisis. Of the altiplano, he recalls: \u201cThat gray altiplano moved me deeply\u2014to which the indigenous people respond with strong colors. As if to survive the dullness, their masks, ponchos, and feathers come to life\u201d25<\/a><\/sup>Pedro Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cBit\u00e1cora\u201d, in Retrospectiva 50 a\u00f1os. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, Santiago, Sala de Arte Fundaci\u00f3n Telef\u00f3nica, 2002, pp. 12\u201313.<\/span>. His observation of clothing, textiles, and their color schemes\u2014as well as the altitude, the dryness of the air, the intensity of the light, and the mineral vastness of the Andean landscape\u2014altered his perception of the relationship between body, color, and territory.<\/p>\n The hiatus caused by the artistic crisis and this journey can be interpreted as a phase of reflection on experience within Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s artistic trajectory. The absence of notes documenting the journey implies that the territory is incorporated into the body before being translated into image, shifting the focus of the journey toward bodily perception and memory. According to Celed\u00f3n, upon his return to the studio, Yrarr\u00e1zaval felt the need to extract the experience he had lived through on the Andean highlands through the practice of painting, activating memory as a process of selection, condensation, and reorganization of that experience. In practical terms, this involved working in layers, allowing the color to settle, and building up the surface through controlled acts of addition, smudging, and subtraction. Ver\u00f3nica Waissbluth describes the process: \u201cHe [Yrarr\u00e1zaval] thickened the paint with successive layers of pigment; beneath a light color he applied a darker one, which also gave the surface the appearance of stone or earth\u201d26<\/a><\/sup>Waissbluth, Grandes artistas contempor\u00e1neos chilenos. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, pp. 32\u201334.<\/span>.<\/p>\n In the paintings produced by Yrarr\u00e1zaval following his journey through the Andean region, each pictorial layer thus modifies the internal relationships within the painting and produces varying degrees of depth, opacity, and vibrancy. The lived experience is transformed into a stratum, and the duration of the work acquires material density, transforming the pictorial surface into a field of sensitive and controlled accumulation. Color takes on a structural role here: mineral and earthy tones\u2014compact ochres, deep reds, muted greens, and dense blues\u2014condense the presence of the territory. The layering regulates the intensity of these color ranges and allows the light colors to retain the depth of the dark tones beneath them. The painting thus functions as a surface of sedimentation where bodily and temporal experiences, translated into chromatic matter, are deposited.<\/p>\n Within this chromatic depth, the body begins to emerge. The vertical structures, bands of color, and geometric cuts gradually reveal torsos, limbs, and heads. This transformation can be observed in Presencia Ancestral<\/em> (\u201cAncestral Presence\u201d) (1965) (Fig. 10), where the figure emerges from a vertical structure traversed by bands of color, and in Mon\u00f3logo<\/em> (\u201cMonologue\u201d) (1969) (Fig. 11), where the vertical and oblique planes of the \u201chead\u201d incorporate suggestions of eyes and a mouth. Both works reveal the transition through which the geometry and material density of the Andean landscape become a body. Here, the form takes on a more defined presence, while retaining the geometric and volumetric dimension of the earlier phase of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s painting27<\/a><\/sup>Waissbluth, Grandes artistas contempor\u00e1neos chilenos. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, pp. 32\u201334.<\/span>.<\/p>\n Figure 10. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Presencia Ancestral<\/em>, 1965.<\/p><\/div>\n Figure 11. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Mon\u00f3logo<\/em>, 1969<\/p><\/div>\n In this phase of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s painting, the edge takes on a structural and sensory function. It is here that the material pauses, accumulates, changes direction, and establishes relationships between the different planes. While in Presencia Ancestral <\/em>the edges contain the horizontal expansion of the chromatic bands and affirm the figure\u2019s verticality, in Mon\u00f3logo <\/em>they separate the planes of the face, articulate the volume of the head with the neck and torso, and regulate the figure\u2019s relationship with the background. This early focus on the edge lays the groundwork for the contour work that will define Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s later oeuvre. The Andean palette can thus be conceived as a sensitive matrix for the presences that emerge there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Chapter III<\/strong><\/p>\n Material Drift and Processual Continuity. From Volume to Plane, from Plane to Interface<\/strong><\/p>\n Based on everything noted thus far, it is possible to argue that Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s practice unfolds as a sustained processual continuity across diverse techniques and media. The first core of this continuity takes shape in his work with ceramics, which began in the 1950s. The potter\u2019s wheel, as we have seen, trains the pressure of the hands, bodily coordination, and the immediate reading of the clay\u2019s resistance. Later, the abstract painting of the 1960s transferred that learning to the application of pigment with a palette knife. And later still, in the 1970s, pastel introduced another form of contact: the stick deposits pigment from the hand and allows its density to be adjusted through pressure, rubbing, and layering.<\/p>\n In the catalog for the group exhibition Cinco Expresiones de la Figuraci\u00f3n en Chile, <\/em>held at Galer\u00eda Cromo in 1977 under the direction of art critic and curator Nelly Richard, Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, in a conversation with his brother, the poet Renato Yrarr\u00e1zaval, made the following observation on the subject:<\/p>\n \u201cAmong other things, \u2026in the very act of creating the work, a very direct contact occurs\u2014a sensation that manifests itself through various aspects of this process. I can point out that this happens very clearly when I work on the heads, when I use my entire hand, almost modeling with the color. Something truly physical takes place there; I become one with what I\u2019m doing, even with a physical intensity. Pastel has allowed me to achieve this fluidity in this sense. For me, it is very important that the painting possess sensuality as a material in and of itself28<\/a><\/sup>Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, interview by Renato Yrarr\u00e1zaval, in Cinco expresiones de la figuraci\u00f3n en Chile: D\u00e1vila, Lira, Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Bru, Smythe<\/em>, Santiago, Galer\u00eda Cromo, July\u2013August 1977, n.p.<\/span>\u201d.<\/p>\n These words confirm that Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work is structured around a sustained relationship between body, tool, and surface. While the gesture involves the hand, the arm, and the position the artist adopts in front of the support, the surface receives the contact, offers resistance, and guides each adjustment. In the case of pastel, the fingers distribute and blend the color onto the paper. In the work Untitled <\/em>(1977) (Fig. 12), for example, these actions shape the oval of the face, define the boundaries of the clothing, and regulate the transition between figure and background. The gesture thus operates through blending and modulation: it spreads the pigment, regulates its density, and maintains the tension between the smoothness of the face and the geometry of the clothing.<\/p>\n Figure 12. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Sin t\u00edtulo<\/em>, 1977<\/p><\/div>\n In Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s paintings from the 1970s, color constructs folds, smoothness, and volume, to the point that the pictorial surface takes on an epidermal quality. The painter and essayist Alberto P\u00e9rez described this material condition of the figures the artist painted during this period: \u201cThe recognizable form, the inflated or angular volume of the early portraits, the smooth, larval-like surfaces are corrugated into brief folds, into tight irregularities of the facial skin, which almost resemble stitches that have been made from within, behind the smooth, thin complexion29<\/a><\/sup>Alberto P\u00e9rez, La soledad en dos pintores chilenos: Mario Carre\u00f1o y Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, Santiago, Editorial F\u00e9rtil Provincia, 1992, pp. 21\u201322.<\/span>\u201d.<\/p>\n In the years that followed, Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s monotypes and enamels incorporated strategies of transfer, inversion, and filtration. In a series of enamel works produced in the early 1990s, the artist works with the mark left by the enamel as it passes through the paper, revealing porous silhouettes, partial impressions, or split forms (Figs. 13 and 14). In this regard, Celed\u00f3n asserts that \u201cit is the trace of the pigment that passes through the paper that will ultimately be the image presented as the artwork30<\/a><\/sup>Celed\u00f3n Ba\u00f1ados, \u201cLa est\u00e9tica del silencio\u201d, pp. 16\u201317.<\/span>\u201d. The support thus participates in the production of the image and renders the relationship between the initial gesture and the visible surface indirect\u2014a material experience that takes on new dimensions with the subsequent incorporation of the computer into the production process of Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s work31<\/a><\/sup>Waissbluth, Grandes artistas contempor\u00e1neos chilenos. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval<\/em>, p. 47.<\/span>.<\/p>\n Figure 13. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Untitled,<\/em> 1991<\/p><\/div>\n Figure 14. Ricardo Yrarr\u00e1zaval, Untitled<\/em>, 1991<\/p><\/div>\n In 1996, an allergy to turpentine forced Yrarr\u00e1zaval to give up oil painting and begin experimenting with Adobe Photoshop. In a conversation with art critic Jos\u00e9 Zalaquett, the artist explained the origin of this practice in detail: \u201cTurpentine became very toxic for me, so in 1996 I had to give up oil painting. A friend once showed me what could be done with Photoshop, and I was amazed. I began exploring that program. Since I can draw by hand on a tablet using a special stylus, the strokes retain both spontaneity and precision.\u201d Ver\u00f3nica Waissbluth recounts that Yrarr\u00e1zaval took his first digitally produced images on a CD to a copy shop to have them enlarged. Thus, the process of creating the work unfolded across two interconnected surfaces: on the one hand, on the screen, where the image is constructed and modified; and then, on the paper or aluminum that serves as its physical medium32<\/a><\/sup>Yrarr\u00e1zaval, conversation with Zalaquett, p. 29.<\/span>.<\/p>\n Yrarr\u00e1zaval\u2019s first series of digital works was presented in 1999 at the A.M.S. Marlborough Gallery in Santiago. This was followed by Pintura y trabajos digitales<\/em>, held at the Modigliani Gallery in Vi\u00f1a del Mar in 2001, and the exhibition Retrospectiva 50 a\u00f1os<\/em>, held at the Fundaci\u00f3n Telef\u00f3nica Art Gallery in 2002, which incorporated these computer-generated works into a broader survey of the artist\u2019s career. In his review of this retrospective, art critic Waldemar Sommer highlighted the work Perfil <\/em>(\u201cProfile\u201d) (1999), recognizing in it a \u201cchilly, almost ghostly dimension\u201d linked to the digital print and its coloration33<\/a><\/sup>Milan Ivelic and Gaspar Galaz, ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.ilposto.cl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Imagen1-209x300.png\")
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