Luis Pablo’s zebra woodcarving thrives on a subtle sculptural tension. The face is all sharp facets, the brow and muzzle sliced into crisp, angular planes. In contrast, the body flows as one smooth, rounded form from chest to hindquarters, exuding quiet confidence. What might seem a mismatch instead becomes a poised equilibrium: the head’s geometry suggests alert intelligence, while the body’s gentle mass radiates calm.
Luis Pablo’s painted design amplifies the carving’s form. On the angular face, stripes shoot straight, converging at the muzzle in taut, parallel lines. Across the rounded body, they bend and arc. Black and white rings sweep around the volume, radiating from the shoulder and hindquarters in two bold spirals that collide at the zebra’s center.
The lines bend and pulse the way optical patterns do, the eye catching false motion in the curves, the volume of the zebra seeming to shift as you walk around it. It is, of course, Op Art, the 1960s movement of Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, who used precise geometric patterning to make flat surfaces vibrate, undulate, and move. Riley's signature was exactly this: hard-edged black-and-white curves calculated to produce illusions of movement.
The subject could not be more fitting. The zebra is nature’s original Op Art creation, evolving its black-and-white stripes long before Bridget Riley ever picked up a brush. Luis Pablo channels the zebra’s innate design through Riley’s visual language, and the result feels destined, as if Op Art had always been waiting for this animal.
The finer touches are unmistakably Luis Pablo. The eyes, circled in vivid blue with yellow irises and sharp black pupils, remain steady and watchful amid the body’s visual energy. The ears glow yellow, edged with red-dashed stitching, while the hooves flash hot pink, a playful wink. The mane and tail, hand-knotted from sisal, anchor all the optical play in a quiet, natural texture.
This is a zebra that wandered through Bridget Riley’s studio and returned utterly certain it had always worn these stripes.
