Diagonales noires et blanches 

The poetry of the works of Antonio Asis is not addressed to our imagination but to our perceptual faculties.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1932, Asis attended the National School of Fine Arts there and won numerous prizes there before moving to Paris in 1956, where he lives and works today.

He admired Mondrian and first devoted himself to abstract painting, whose balance was based on the harmony of colors and shapes.

The journey of Asis is that of the many Latin American artists who took the road to Paris in the 1950s, to come and breathe new life into optical-kinetic art.

Like these kinetic contemporaries who produce works in real movement, Asis takes the side of a purely optical art: either in suggested movement, aroused by the displacement of the spectator facing the work. With Asis, the simple act of seeing becomes a real experience and we can say that his retinal plastic research is similar to that of Victor Vasarely, Bridget Riley and Jesus-Rafael Soto.

Antonio Asis treats his diagonals in a way that gives his paintings similar effects of depth.The black and white color range is arranged in diagonal lines that lighten up and then darken again. Its diagonals represent a static constellation of squares and shading.

Thanks to his instinct for shapes, Antonio Asis, with Digaonales noires et blanches, experiments (with) effects of volume and speed. The kinetic research of Asis is essentially proven in this work following his inspiration. This work also shows his interest in an interaction between movement and optical effect in order to create a relationship between the viewer and the work. From chromatic research to perfect chords, Antonio Asis leads the viewer into an unstable world through his diagonals, where he alone has the key to the enigma.