Green Circulation No. 23
signed and dated 1975 (verso)
acrylic (aqua-tec)
24" x 24" (61 cm x 61 cm)

PROVENANCEA gift from the artist to the present owner


Lee Aguinaldo’s paintings are often spare and distinctive in terms of color sensibility and paint quality. For Aguinaldo, color is a palpable and sufficient physical presence. When compounded in planar arrangements, it would engage its perceiver in an objective and analytical exercise. Aguinaldo places great emphasis on eliminating brushwork and all visible evidence of handling, aiming for a totally flat and even skin of pigment that maintains the integrity of the picture plane. There is no attempt to create any more than the bare essentials of picture space; the geometric quality of the frame, with its right angles, makes for order, hence, conscious rationality. For Lee Aguinaldo, elaborating a spatial framework as much as excessive use of color, decoration, or narrative could detract from the picture’s power. Aguinaldo favored the square format for his landscape paintings. Not by chance and not for convenience. This format makes it possible to bathe the subject in an atmosphere of rationality and purity. Aguinaldo’s Green Circulation series is influenced by his earlier Linear works. This piece, titled Green Circulation, emphasizes the core purpose of the titular series, which is to explore the inherent relationship between the color green and the different hues and levels of lumination often linked to it through a color field painting. At the very center of the piece are various iterations of blue that gradually shift to shades of green. Emerald green spaces then supplement these elements. By presenting two iterations of the same color, with the center acting as a spectrum and its flanking sides acting as a solid mass, Aguinaldo presents us with the reality of the visual experience, effectively suggesting that singular elements are often only fully appreciated when presented alongside their opposites. (J.D.)