Eduardo Arroyo

Eduardo Arroyo Rodríguez (Madrid, February 26, 1937-ibid, October 14, 2018) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver in a figurative style, key to narrative figuration as well as Spanish Neoplasticism (or new figuration) and linked to popart. He also dedicated part of his time to writing.

Refugee in Paris since 1958 due to his anti-Francoism, Arroyo lately gained prominence in the national artistic circuit, starting in the 1980s, after a two-decade estrangement forced by the Franco regime. Currently, his works hang in the most reputable Spanish and foreign modern art museums and his creativity extends to theatrical sets and illustrated editions.

Arroyo exhibited in a group exhibition in Paris already in 1960 (“Salón de la Joven Pintura”), but his first public impact occurred three years later, when he presented the polyptych The Four Dictators at the III Paris Biennial,2​ a series of effigies of dictators, which provoked protests from the Spanish government. Likewise in 1963, Arroyo prepared an exhibition at the Biosca gallery in Madrid, which would be inaugurated without his presence, since he had to flee to France pursued by the police; The exhibition was censored and closed a few days later.

Eduardo Arroyo currently has a presence in many important world art centers. The Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid exhibits three of its 11 canvases among 13 works, highlighting Carmen Amaya fries sardines at the Waldorf Astoria, where the character is symbolically represented with an Andalusian shawl, The Four Dictators from 1963 and Vivir y deja muerte from 1965. The Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao, which dedicated an exhibition to him, has The Cabin of the Marxist Brothers (a large painting that mixes cinema and communism, two of its recurring themes) and received a hundred engravings from the artist as a donation. Works by Arroyo are also found in the IVAM in Valencia, the MACBA in Barcelona, ​​the Municipal Museum of Madrid, the Berardo Collection Museum in Lisbon, the Cantonal Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne or the New National Gallery in Berlin, with the three canvases General Resfriado N°1 to N°3 from 1962. In the collection of the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris there are 13 works, including 4 canvases and one canvas in that of the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, belonging to the city, and that of the MOMA in New York. In 2013 he won the ABC Cultural & Ámbito Cultural Award.