Angela de la Cruz’s paintings appear to have been vandalised and desecrated, but these are deliberate acts on the part of the artist to literally deconstruct the grandiosity of painting. De la Cruz’s work is situated within the monochrome painting tradition: from the twentieth century onwards, monochrome painting signalled a radical departure from figurative art, emphasising the materiality of painting rather than illusion and representation. Lucio Fontana’s ‘slash paintings’ of the 1950s and 60s, one of which is in the NGV Collection, provides further context for de la Cruz in terms of the way destructive processes can be deployed for aesthetic ends.