Extract text was first published in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Leopoldo Novoa’, 1973, at the Ulster Museum, Belfast

…In an art-period when one is visually jostled from all sides by conceptual recipes for paintings framed and hung on gallery walls as actual paintings, by melodramatic “neo-realist” representations, or by a violence of real or suggested material contrasts, the modesty, control  and compositional integrity of Leopoldo Novoa’s art seems at first a strangely isolated phenomenon. A lonely expression in its understatement and in the restraint and discipline  of his almost monochrome surfaces, brought to life by a quiet dance of light on their rounded relief forms , on their sharp-cut lines reflecting light from their edges, by the  light-washed indentations – even punctures in the picture surface. The whole has an evident unity in its rhythmic vitality, a hint of mystery in its chiaroscuro notes and a sensuous satisfaction: all of which adds up to a subtle, delicate pleasure.
But, if at first  glance, Novoa’s painting seems an isolated  phenomenon, when  we turn  aside from the noisier , more aggressive expressions surrounding us today we realize Novoa is no sport; this definitely personal idiom of his is part of a continuity of expression, individualized to be sure as all true art is…