BY EDUARDO SERRANO tion. While one may say that abstraction seems to have haunted all his work, the truth is that abstraction was central only to his first efforts. is is not surprising, considering that in the fifties and early sixties the eyes of the art world were fixed mainly on abstract expressionism, the first American art movement that stood at the forefront of an international avante garde. In fact, his first exhibition in Colombia in the Galeria El Callejón in ( FIG. 333 ) consisted of a collection of figurative drawings along with a number of collages and abstract paintings (see FIGS. 334 335 ) . But Abstract Expressionism, with its spontaneity, energy, and bombast, did not coincide with Amaral’s rather sober and careful artistic personality, which is has a certain preference for the geometric and something of the interest of artists like Dubuffet with regard to the expression of ideas which are not exactly logical or normative. Moreover, Amaral has neither then nor since been fully con- vinced of the suitability of abstraction alone as a means of ex- pressing his creativity or transmitting his thoughts or insights. His exploration of abstraction was at the time rather a way to practice and master painting techniques. is does not mean that the artist had no interest in abstraction or that his contri- butions to the history of art are trivial or short-lived. To the con- trary, non-figurative chromatic, textural, and formal values are amply present in his works, giving rise to considerations of the abstract that complete the meaning and content of his work. In other words, while abstraction is not the central argument in his work, it holds an important place in his sculptural standards and appears unequivocally in the mounting of his drawings and paintings. is is particularly true with regard to their frames and passe-partout, as well as his invariably figurative sculptures, the pe- culiar hieroglyphs incised in bronze in some pieces, in the compo- nents attached to the figures and, above all, in the forms of sacred geometry that symbolize the deeper content of his recent work. At the same time, the act of providing his drawings with a scant, minimal three-dimensionality, which is clearly evident in the linear grooves of his drawings, alerted me to his special in- terest in the artistic possibilities of texture as opposed to planim- etry, smoothness, and, by extension, volume, though the latter feature is practically imperceptible. is suspicion was confirmed on seeing he was inclined to- ward three-dimensional work since his school days and that that . Exhibition catalog, Galería El Callejón, ƒ†. . Composition № , ƒ‡. ׄ cm, mixed media. . Untitled, ƒƒ. ‡×‡ cm, mixed media.