Collection: Antonio Saura
Antonio Saura Atarés (Huesca, September 22, 1930-Cuenca, July 22, 1998) was a painter and writer, considered one of the great Spanish artists of the 20th century.
Together with Manolo Millares, Pablo Serrano, Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito and other artists, he founded the group El Paso (1957-1959). He exhibited for the first time in Paris at the Stadler Gallery in 1957. The following year, 1958, he participated together with Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida in the Venice Biennale and in 1959 he was invited to the second edition of Documenta in Kassel (Germany). In 1958 she painted her first Imaginary Portraits, from which the Brigitte Bardot series emerged. Between 1957 and 1960 he made several series of large-format paintings whose themes would recur throughout his work: Crucifixions, Ladies, Shrouds, Portraits, Imaginary Portraits, Nudes, Nude Landscapes, Priests, Goya's Dog and Multitudes. From this time on, the chromaticism of his painting was limited, for a long time, to the use of blacks, grays and earths. Assuming the trends of European informalism and American abstract expressionism, he will follow a personal career that has its roots in the heritage of Velázquez, Spanish baroque painting in general, and Goya.
Most of Antonio Saura's work is figurative and characterized by conflict with form. His paintings are expressive and give the impression of being obsessive in their pictorial directness. It is a conflict with a world full of contradictions and lacking security, in which pessimism prevails.
