Oh man, it’s been slightly over a month since I last covered a National Gallery exhibit–and honestly, that’s way too long. Fortunately, the museum seems to agree, because this time, I’m back with another exhibition to tell you about! And the best part? Well, unless you’re reading from the distant future, its both open right now!
Without getting too ahead of myself, here’s a quick overview of Fernando Zóbel: Order is Essential. As the first-ever solo exhibition dedicated to the transcontinental abstract artist, this survey of his art features over 200 pieces—including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and archival materials—to offer fresh narratives about his multifaceted contributions as an avid traveller, cosmopolitan thinker, and pioneering collector.
We’ve got a lot to cover today, and since I’ve been invited to a curatorial tour of the exhibit, let’s dilly-dally no longer.
Fernando Zóbel: Order is Essential
Let’s start with the exhibit’s name: Order is Essential. The title comes from an interview with Zóbel, where he states the following when asked about the sense of order in his paintings, giving us a glimpse into the artistic philosophy that defined him. The full question and its answer are printed across separate walls of the room, with a blown-up portrait of the artist positioned in between, making me feel like I was a fly on the wall during this revealing exchange.
But that’s not all the information to get about Zóbel. On the other side of the room, before an outline of the exhibition’s context and aims, there’s also a short biography of the artist himself–including the detail that he was born in the Philippines to a prominent Spanish family.
While it’s a small note in comparison to the countless highlights of Zóbel’s remarkably rich life, it’s also—as I’d come to learn later—one that would play a consistently significant role in his story.
“Half of this haunted monk’s life”
Next, the exhibition officially opens with “Half of this haunted monk’s life”–a prologue that traces the arc of Zóbel’s artistic evolution through—as Chief Curator at the National Gallery Singapore, Project Director and Co-curator of the exhibition Dr. Patrick Flores shares—a poignant pairing of his first and last recorded paintings.
From an early expressionist copy of A Wheatfield and Cypresses by Vincent van Gogh to El Puente (The Bridge)—the final painting he was still working on by the time of his passing—their juxtaposition concisely capture of the breadth of Zóbel’s journey and his lifelong dialogue with the past and future as well.
And what a fitting last work might I add, since, as Dr. Flores pointed out, Zóbel was also a bridge himself: connecting cultural contexts and artists all across the globe, greatly shaping modernist movements worldwide.
To use another metaphor, Zóbel could be seen—as American art historian George Kubler describes in The Shape of Time—as both a “precursor” who “shapes a new civilisation,” and the “rebel” who “defies the edges of a disintegrating one.” This concept, handwritten by Zóbel alongside a drawing of his painting, is featured in a sketchbook as the third piece of this section, offering yet another glimpse into the influences that shaped his artistic journey.
“With every single refinement”
Moving on, “With every single refinement” explores Zóbel’s formative years in New England, where he took his first steps toward becoming a professional artist. Here in the northeastern region of the United States, Zóbel immersed himself in the study of culture and art, first as a student of Harvard University and later at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), learning from influential abstract artists such as Mark Rothko and Franz Kline.
Besides Zóbel’s scrapbook and lecture notes from his art history classes, don’t miss A World Tree Almanac–a playful drawing (and my personal favourite from his Harvard days) where he imagines how Richard Lippold’s World Tree sculpture could be decked out for various holiday seasons. Additionally, see if you can spot all the different caricatures he sketched during his time at the university–they look especially vibrant now that they’ve been digitised!
Finally, whilst exploring Zóbel’s connection with the Rhode Island art scene, I found his Portrait of Jim Pfeufer with Clarinet with Reed Champion-Pfeufer’s Unicorn (Seated Horse) to be wholesome representations of the close friendship he shared with the American couple. In fact, they may well have been the biggest catalysts in developing his artistic practices!
Beyond their informal mentorship and help in securing an artist residency at RISD for Zóbel, Jim also personally taught the young artist lithography and engraving. Thus, since their guidance exposed Zóbel to a wide range of techniques—an experience that sharpened his technical skills and shaped the artistic sensibilities that would come to define his evolving style—I think it’s only right to give them their flowers in this article too.
“Thin lines against a field of colour”
At the midpoint of this exhibition, “Thin lines against a field of colour” explores Zóbel’s position at the forefront of modernism in Manila, where he distilled key principles and motifs that reflected the vitality he saw in his birthplace. First, this quality of artistic production is reflected with a selection of lithographs and paintings of Catholic sculptures like the carroza—a processional float that often carries depictions of saints and religious figures—reflecting Zóbel’s interests as a scholar of Philippine religious imagery.
Then, over in the next room, catch the mixed media piece Snappers and some of the other seven pieces Zóbel submitted to the First Non-Objective Art Exhibition in the Philippines, the largest number from any of the eleven participating artists in this landmark moment for Filipino abstract art.
This room also features exclusive works from Zóbel’s renowned Saeta series, created using long, continuous lines of paint applied with a needleless syringe–an innovative method that was developed after Zóbel, as Dr. Flores notes, was inspired while watching a baker pipe icing onto a cake. And with one of Zóbel’s actual syringes on display alongside the surrounding paintings, who knows–maybe you’ll be inspired in the same vein too!
In the last stretch of the gallery, set against its striking red walls, historical calligraphy and works by him and Asian artists from his collection are also exhibited, highlighting Zóbel’s multifaceted role as an artist, patron, and collector and his deep engagement with broader artistic practices.
Though Zóbel’s Oriental Calligraphy Seal Album with handwritten notes and Liu Kuo-sung’s Lofty Zigzags are definite highlights in this space, nothing else quite topped a photograph of Zóbel’s Japanese-style house with the context that it was built in Metro Manila for me–cementing him in my eyes as, in the best way possible, one of the earliest and coolest weebs (one who appreciates Japanese culture) around.
Right as I’m about to leave the Wu Guanzhong Gallery to continue along Zóbel’s journey, I’m greeted by another blown-up portrait of the man—this time nonchalantly standing next to a kakejiku (hanging scroll) at his home in Madrid.
“Movement that includes its own contradiction”
Similarly, right as I’m about to enter the Level 4 Gallery, I come across yet more bonus content not allocated into any of the sections. This time, it’s a roadmap of modern art as illustrated by Zóbel—twisting and winding away and into one another like the branches of a tree—along with copies of his lecture outlines and notes for visitors to browse through.
But while I didn’t have the luxury of time to fully dive into the booklets, only a brief opportunity to leaf through them, they nonetheless appear to be rich resources for anyone keen to explore a wide range of topics from such a well-versed lens, so give them a read when you can.
But enough about his literature, because if “Thin lines against a field of colour” is the midpoint of Order is Essential, then “Movement that includes its own contradiction” is the exhibition’s main highlight. Continuing the journey of Zóbel’s artistic evolution, this section explores his time in the capital of Spain, where he settled in 1961 and refined his abstraction approach.
During this period, Zóbel embraced the Art Informel movement, making a shift toward a more nuanced portrayal of tones and grids, with his Serie Negra (Black Series) as a key example of this transformation. And though the gallery thinks that La Visión (The Vision) is the star of this show, I’d like to introduce my personal favourite from the series instead: Ícaro (Icarus).
Through blurred, streaked paint, and stripped-down compositions, Zóbel perfectly isolates the essence of his visual language using only black and white to remove any distractions, giving rise to a raw, visceral rendition of the punished Greek myth as he plummets through the clouds.
But apart from his independent experimentations, Zóbel’s journey was also one of constant dialogue with, particularly, the artists of European and North American art history. This can be seen in works like El sueño de la Doncella (ii). Conversación con Lorenzo Lotto (The Dream of the Damsel (II). Conversation with Lorenzo Lotto), which references prominent Renaissance painter Lorenzo Lotto’s Allegory of Chastity, though Zóbel did not merely replicate these artists’ techniques.
Instead, as I saw for myself with the two aforementioned paintings displayed side by side, he reinterpreted their formal qualities through his abstract technique, creating a variation that was uniquely his own. His engagements with these past masters went beyond homage–they were also deliberate efforts to challenge and redefine the very essence of abstraction.
“The light of the painting”
The exhibition’s final section focuses on Zóbel’s final year in Cuenca, a city outside Madrid that profoundly influenced his artistic vision. Immersed in the natural beauty of its landscape and medieval fortifications, Zóbel’s work became attuned to his surroundings. Be it the gorge that he called “La Vista” (The View), the houses in the valley, the plateau, the Júcar and Huécar rivers or their banks–he sought to capture all of the historic city’s essence with sensitivity and nuance.
So, from this suite of works emerged two series: La Vista and Serie Blanca (White Series)–the latter of which you can already guess is meant to be the yang to Serie Negra’s yin. These works, often monochromatic, pushed Zóbel further into abstraction, blurring the distinction between figure and ground.
Taking a deeper dive into the creative process behind La Vista, I learnt that the series is “based on the view through [his] window,” though specifically, not on the elements one might typically find interesting, such as houses, roads, or even colours.
Rather, Zóbel found himself deeply fascinated with what constituted the history of a painting–an answer he believed could only be uncovered through the process of elimination. And by removing every anecdote, every distraction, and even the colour—since, as he claimed, “it [tied him] down to a moment in time”—it’s no wonder that the series grew so expansive.
Eventually, when “nothing [was] left but a structure and a certain light”—aka the light of the painting—Zóbel finally found himself at the 26th iteration of his original concept: La Vista XXVI.
And by the way–see those overhangs on the sides of La Vista XXVI’s panel? Well, according to Dr. Flores, they were a deliberate design choice in amplifying not just the precariousness of the view itself (although it does that to great effect), but more so the boldness of Zóbel’s decision to pursue the series of La Vista in the first place.
Moving on, Zóbel’s exploration of movement also extended into photography. In addition to a collage of images featured in the previous section, several of his photos are exhibited here as well–capturing fleeting moments of motion in football scenes through an accordion-style display.
These images later informed paintings like Fútbol 14 (Football 14), where, just like in La Vista, Zóbel explore the same subject multiple times, experimenting with variations in compositions, medium, and colour. With each variant ranging from recognisable images to abstracted gestures of movement, it seemed that there was no limit in Zóbel’s relentless chase of capturing movement.
But just as Zóbel championed modern art in the Philippines, he also advocated for the artists in Spain – collecting their works during a time when institutional support for the arts was limited under Prime Minister Francisco Franco’s authoritarian rule.
As such, the final portion of this section is dedicated to the artists Zóbel supported, particularly those who were working in abstraction and Informalism, much like himself. Among them were close friends like Gustavo Torner and Gerardo Rueda, and together they played a crucial role in designing, launching and running the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español (Museum of Spanish Abstract Art) in the iconic Casas Colgadas (Hanging Houses) of Cuenca.
And while there isn’t a definitive account of whether Zóbel truly supported or opposed the Franco regime, Dr. Flores offered an insightful perspective when I asked him about it: when the museum opened in 1966, it was a time of turbulence in Spain.
The country was rife with student demonstrations and protest actions, and tensions ran high between both the supporters and opponents of Franco. Yet, despite this unrest, Zóbel persisted–creating and managing a space where abstract artists could come together, a space that still exists to this day.
So yes, maybe the man is a paradox at times, but considering this is the same person who said “order is essential” in his abstract art, should that really be a surprise? Could Zóbel really just be full of walking contradictions right down to his heritage, or to utilise a metaphor I saw way back in the exhibit’s prologue, could he just be both the precursor and the rebel?
Well, regardless of what you think, it’s undeniable that Zóbel—the artist, thinker, and so much more—left a lasting impact on a lot of people. And perhaps, it’s also quite fitting that nothing illustrates that better than what I see as the exhibit’s final artwork: a mind map of all the varied relationships he’s forged throughout his remarkably rich life.
With that said, that’s my experience of Fernando Zóbel: Order is Essential done and dusted! Although it may have seemed like a real long review, trust me, there’s so much that I’ve left out. So, if you want to know what Zóbel’s family looked like and what his artist friends made, visit this exhibition today!
🗓️Date: 9 May to 30 November 2025
📍Location: Level 4, Wu Guanzhong Gallery and Level 4 Gallery, City Hall Wing, National Gallery, Singapore 178957
💲Price: Free for Singaporeans and PRs
⏰Time: 10am to 7pm
Additionally, if you’re planning to share your experience on social media, don’t forget to tag the National Gallery on Instagram and TikTok along with the hashtag #OrderIsEssential for a chance to be reposted on their socials! With that said, see you in our next review of another National Gallery exhibit–coming your way very soon!
Photos by Zheng Yi of the DANAMIC team. Additional visuals courtesy of National Gallery Singapore.
