Photos: Carlos A. Schwartz – Efraín Pintos

Untitled (Known as The Death Clock)

“This dramatic piece of work is found in the work of José Abad, in red-painted iron, dated 1973. This sculptor has arranged the scrap metal of a wrecked airplane into a geometric construction in the form of an open box. He has returned in a way to his initial period of the found object, but this time with the difference of including some Mondrianesque arrangements. This monumental sculpture has something of a gallows or infernal machine about it. Even the chains hanging from it could be ropes of blood. But subjected to a structure, to a geometric rigour, the work takes on the abstract character of a gratuitous and fantastic machine”

Westerdahl, E. (1973). La 1ª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en la calle, en Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Quaderns d’arquitectura i urbanisme, ISSN 1133-8857, Nº. 99. Número dedicado a los parques naturales, 47-50.

“The prismatic cage in which Tenerife-born José Abad (La Laguna, 1942) encloses his incredible and impossible suspended machine also poses another meaning of the destiny of the plastic arts that denounces the detritus that technological industrial activity relentlessly provokes on a daily basis”

Hernández Perera, J. (1996). Dos décadas de Esculturas en la Calle. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 25-54). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6

“and our own José Abad (b. 1942), who, being sensitive to different instances and influences, always knew how to give it a personal interpretation, and who on that occasion resorted to industrial waste inserted in a rigid orthogonal structure”

Pérez Reyes, C. (1996). Reflexión sobre lo visto y lo vivido. En A. Carnero, D. Duque, & C. Schwartz, Iª Exposición Internacional de Escultura en La Calle (págs. 65-76). Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Cabildo Insular de Tenerife. Área de Cultura. ISBN: 84-87340-63-6