FÉLIX DE LA CONCHA
WHITE TOWERS. AFTER FALLINGWATER
The first solo exhibition of Félix de la Concha (Leon, 1962) in the gallery Fernandez-
Braso de Madrid. “White towers, After Fallingwater” brings together a number of paintings
carried out between 2020 and 2021 from different points of view, exterior and interior, the
building by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza. The artist focuses on him after his experience
in the House of the Waterfall (Pennsylvania, Usa) Frank Lloyd Wright, another icon
architectural that also inspired Sáenz de Oiza. The Shell was there between the
years 2005 and 2006, the series “Fallingwater in Perspective”, with unprecedented access to
the house, invited by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy.
Between brutalism, the organicism and utopia, White Towers, vertical city 23
plants built at the base of curves, tried to, in the words of its author, to overcome “the
consideration of a tower was to the overlay floor to floor of a series of houses,
in place of a living organism”. Since its construction, at the end of the sixties, it has been
become an icon of Spanish architecture and a building of worship for
creators of a distinct nature. The independent film director Jim Jarmusch was awarded the
role of the building in his film of 2009 “The limits of control”. And recently,
White towers was the scene of the music video “stupid”, the singer madrid C.
Tangana.
It is inevitable to remember some of the moments and players that evokes, direct
or indirectly, this exposure. The influence of the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright
in Sáenz de Oiza, formalized in the trip by the Spanish architect to States
United states at the end of the forties. The friendship and teamwork between Oiza and the
sculptor Jorge Oteiza and the relationship of both with the philanthropist John Huarte, entrepreneur
commissioned architect the project and the construction of White Towers.
In the text of the catalogue of the exhibition, María Escribano, art criticism, exposes, and
develops the themes that promote an exhibition and an artist as the Shell. The
figuration in our time. The architecture as “the spirit of the place”.
“You could say that Félix de la Concha is a painter of portraits and landscapes, but above all
that is a painter of landscapes inhabited. Landscapes were inhabited, not by man but by
architectures, by artifices that he chooses to immortalize empty of its architects, but
marked for them, as if sight of the desire of eternity left by the absent
in every particle of her material form, and any godly divinity, he would have
entrusted with the task of making it visible”.
In addition to the works dedicated to Torres Blancas, the exhibition will include two works by the
series Fallingwater in perspective and a series done in 2021 on another building
emblematic of Oiza, the controversial “Hem of the M-30”.
“Time”, “the reflection on the permanent and the changing”, the “close combat
body” between the artist and reality, “the eternal and the fugitive”, are concepts that come
of the series that has gone by Félix de la Concha. One a day: 365 Views of the
Cathedral of Learning, exhibited at the Carnegie Museum of Art in 1999 and installed in
permanently in the Alumni Hall Pittsburgh. Fallingwater in Perspective (2005-
2006), invited by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and exhibited in several museums
united States (Melvin Art Gallery, Prize Tower, State Museum of Pennsylvania). One
Season from Each Corner (Columbus Museum of Art). Private Portraits / Public
Conversations (Hood Museum of Art, New Hampshire). Portraying Holocaust Survivors
(Weisman Museum of Art, Minneapolis). Hermitage Artist Intrigue (The Hermitage,
Sarasota). Panorama WBZ. Through the Looking-Glass (Universität St. Gallen, Switzerland).
Félix de la Concha studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Madrid until 1985, the year in
it is awarded in the First exhibition of Young Art. In 1989 he received the scholarship of the
Academy of Spain in Rome, and currently resides in Italy until 1995, the year in which it moves to the
The united states, where he fixed his residence, and continues his artistic career.
The latest solo exhibition of Félix de la Concha in Madrid took place in 2008 in the
galería Leandro Navarro. In 2022, and formed part of the selection of gallery artists
Fernández-Braso exposed at the fair ARCOmadrid, showing the series of 288 paintings
“Hanging clothes. A daily painting”, between 2019 and 2020.
His next exhibition will be: Portico. Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, spain, (November).
CAB de Burgos, (June).
The exhibition is due to open next Thursday, march 17, in the hours of 11 to 14 h. and
17 to 21 hours. The artist will be present from 18 to 21 hours.