Antonio Saura

VISIONES Y OBSESIONES

WORKS FROM 1956 TO 1993

THE ART GALLERY FERNÁNDEZ-BRASO PAYS HOMAGE TO ANTONIO SAURA ON THE FIFTEENTH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS DEATH THROUGH AN EXHIBITION, A RETROSPECTIVE OF KEY WORKS OF THE AUTHOR.

Artista clave en la renovación artística española de la segunda mitad de siglo XX y uno de los actuales autores españoles más admirados a nivel internacional.

Under the title of Visions and Obsessions the exhibition offers a journey through the different stages of the artist since its beginnings in the late fifties as the mythical founder of the Group The Step up to the nineties, when he was already considered an artist fully international.  

The selection of works reviews the different topics that Saura addressed time and time again throughout his career -as are the crucifixion, portraits, self-portraits, the ladies, the gentlemen, the accumulations - thus showing his personal view and analysis of the society that surrounded him, and, in particular, referred to the history and customs of spain.

The exhibition consists of ten paintings on canvas of wide-format and more than twenty works on paper, capturing the evolution of plastic artist from a few early works gestural with great dramatic tension made in black-and-white up to the more formalistic and less sober for the last period.

Biography

  • Biography

    Antonio Saura was born in Huesca in 1930 and died in Basin in 1998. He starts to paint and to write in Madrid, in 1947, while recovering from tuberculosis keeps him immobilized for five years. Top searches and first pictorial experiences. Claimed the influence of Arp and Tanguy, but is distinguished as a personal style; created numerous drawings and paintings of nature dreamlike and surrealistic in which generally represents imaginary landscapes that plasma in a matter flat, smooth and rich in color. First stay in Paris in 1952. Second period in Paris between 1954 and 1955, during which known as Benjamin Péret, and frequents the group of surrealists, the soon-to step back along with his friend the painter Simon Hantaï.

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    Used then the technique of grattage, adopts a style and gestural painting radically abstract, colorful, conception organic and random. He starts to paint occupying the space of the canvas in several very different ways, creating formal structures of their own that does not cease to develop. First appearances of forms that will soon become archetypes of the body of the woman or of the human figure, two fundamental issues that will occupy the essence of her work. From 1956 Saura began his great series, Ladies, Nudes, self-Portraits, Shrouds, Crucifixion, painted on both canvas as well as on paper. In 1957, founded in Madrid in the El Paso group, which will lead to its dissolution in 1960. He meets Michel Tapié. First solo exhibition at the gallery of Rodolphe Stadler, in Paris, where it will exhibit a constant throughout his life. Stadler presented to Otto van de Loo, Munich, and Pierre Matisse in New York, who also present their work and they will represent you. Limits then his palette to blacks, grays and browns. It is stated in a style of their own and independent of the movements and trends of his generation. His work is part of the line of Velázquez and Goya. Enters the main museums. Starting in 1959, is dedicated to a prolific graphic work. Illustrated in an original way numerous books such as Don Quixote, Cervantes, 1984, Orwell, Pinocchio in the adaptation of Nöstlinger, Tagebücher, Kafka, Three visions of Quevedo, and many others. In 1960 he begins to sculpt and perform works composed with elements of metal soldier who will represent the human figure, characters and crucifixions. In 1967 he settled permanently in Paris; it is involved in the opposition to franco's dictatorship, and takes part in numerous debates and controversies in the fields of politics, aesthetics and artistic creation. Extends your registration thematic and pictorial. Along with the series Women-armchair is shown the Portraits imaginary, The Goya's dog and imaginary Portrait of Goya. In 1971 leaves painting on canvas, which will take over in 1979, to devote himself to writing, drawing and painting on paper. Beginning in 1977, begins to publish his writings and performs several stage designs for the theatre, as well as for the ballet and the opera. In 1983, created an important series of portraits titled Dora Maar or Dora Maar visited. From that date until his untimely death takes up and develops masterfully set of themes and figures to produce, perhaps, the best of his work.

Exhibitions

Catalogs

Selección de obra de Antonio Saura