Expressionism was a movement that broke with the existing concept of painting by the end of the 19th century. Previously, Fauvists had made of colour the protagonist of their creations.

Expressionists made colour win over shape, they got rid of all the ties that corseted painting and opened the way leading to abstraction; they are the ones that, in that search of the essence in painting, reached abstraction though, as I have already expressed in some of my reflections, abstraction is a two way ticket; that is why I think that the “nickname” abstract Neo-expressionism should not exist if abstraction is a goal the artist reaches in his attempt to search and summarize the essential in painting, that is why in my opinion, the “nickname” Abstract Neo-expressionism should not exist. If abstraction is a goal reached in the artist’s attempt to find and synthesize what is essential in painting, once everything is “cooked”  in its interior and always starting from a reality… that is why, I shall repeat, wanting to introduce Abstract Neo-expressionism as a new and independent movement, starting and finishing with the concept of abstraction, is something wrong and it is something that has been used by many freeloaders of art who have committed the great sacrilege of the 21st century.

I do not want to finish these thoughts and reflections, so appropriate for this so politicized century (especially in this Spain of ours), without crying out for them to stop doing virtual politics and that they do real politics. I would demand the people leading and representing us, those who make the laws that rule us, to follow the path that art, painting, sculpture, literature, music, cinema have followed for centuries, always trespassing borders, looking for new ways, exploring new horizons and uniting peoples in a common cause: the search for beauty, destroying walls and always in an universal way.

That is why I am convinced, and I always say so, that the soul of the cities is art, being love the soul of civilization. And the great Love is the Creator, and us artists, the “labourers” who have to sow the seed of love in the world.

Jorge Rando, Hamburg, September 2010