During the 1960s, Abelló embarked on a period of artistic and conceptual experimentation, which he labelled "explosivism".
The influence of Joaquim Mir’s tatxism with its splashes of colour, provided him with a third dimension, playing with thickness and texture, and thus achieving a (physical) explosion of colour on the canvass.
Both works, The sagrada família and the Holm Oak, are great examples of explosivism. You can see that the thickness of the paint in the tree top and the spires of the cathedral gives the work a sculptured aspect.
The artist’s great memory for colour and his ability to capture this using a wide chromatic range, characterises all Joan Abelló’s work.