São Paulo, Brazil, 1955

“Numbers (and words):“ why not write them and why explain them ”, asks Raquel Kogan in a handwritten statement. There we have, as indicated by the artist herself, the second way of approaching her works.

Following this second way, it is no longer a matter of deciphering the meanings of numbers and words and the chain between them, that is, it is no longer a matter of facing them in their semantic aspect, but as icons, pure images devoid of a priori meaning. . The goal now is to analyze the way in which the artist, using these linguistic and mathematical signs, or this larval world, subverts the traditional, Renaissance space, which, being figurative, presupposes the idea of depth, of a visual envelope. Depth that for Merleau-Ponty is “the dimension imprisoned for excellence”. Raquel Kogan’s objective, then, would be to free the graphics from any and all representative constraints, to make the surface the receptacle of forces without a central axis without limits or borders. Almost a delusion of signs.

In the testimony mentioned, Raquel talks about writing numbers, which can also be read as writing painting, as a proposal for a pictorial scripture. This makes it possible to bring his engravings and paintings closer to the plastic démarche of other artists who have followed the same path. I think of Mark Tobey’s “white writing”, André Masson’s “cyclone writing”, Pollock’s drippings. That is to say, I see Raquel Kogan integrating into a tradition that started possibly with Klee and Miró, passes through Wols, Arshile Gorky, Michaux, Cy Towmbly until reaching Opalka. It is certain that his graphics and / or lyricism does not have the radicalism of painting Pollock’s all over nor Towmbly’s lyrical economy and still less Opalka’s obsessiveness. However, the strands represented by these three artists exist, virtually, in the works of Raquel Kogan. ”

Frederico Morais, 1996