Red Pentagons

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

José María Yturralde

1970

Silkscreen

Description

José María Yturralde was among the first Spanish artists to use computers as a creative tool. Between 1968 and 1973, Yturralde developed a system for generating and transforming geometric shapes through code, creating structures that played with symmetry, depth, and illusion. Works from this period, including Five Pentagons, belong to his Impossible Figures series, generated from programmed instructions and drawn with a plotter. By combining computational methods with studies of perception, he created images that question how we experience space and how rational order can give rise to visual contradiction.

Five Pentagons presents two vertical sequences of pentagons set against a bright red background. Each column follows its own logic of arrangement, creating a subtle dissonance between them. The precision of the crisp blue lines heightens the sense of control, while the variation between columns introduces a quiet instability. The work highlights Yturralde’s pursuit of a space where mathematical order gives rise to perceptual ambiguity.