Antonio Saura
Antonio Saura ( born September 22, 1930 in Huesca, † July 22, 1998 in Cuenca) was a Spanish artist and brother of film director Carlos Saura.
Life
Antonio Saura was born in 1930 in Huesca. A tuberculosis forced him to Madrid to five years of total peace, which led him in 1947 to start painting and writing. First experiments of pictorial invention. He received his first artistic influences of Hans Arp and Yves Tanguy. In numerous drawings and paintings by surrealist " dream world " character he early developed a personal style. Using a flat and applied in liquid form, rich color material mainly imaginary landscapes created. After a first visit to Paris in 1952, he returned in 1954 and 1955 back there. There he met Benjamin Péret know and perverse short among the Surrealists, however, he and his friend, the painter Simon Hantaï soon left again. He turned to the art of grattage. By means of its gestural style, he took a radically abstract, always colored painting, with an organically - aleatory conception.
The surface of the canvas, he worked frequently in different work methods, where it formal, very specific structural elements made use of, he developed more and more. So the first forms that mutated the archetypal model of the female body or human heads emerged. These two basic themes made up the bulk of his other work. From 1956 Saura began his extensive series of works ladies, nudes, self-portraits, handkerchiefs, crucifixions, which he painted on canvas or on paper.
In 1957 he co-founded the artist group El Paso in Madrid, which he headed until its dissolution in 1960. He met the French art critic and collector Michel Tapié know. His first solo exhibition was shown at Rodolphe Stadler in Paris where he exhibited from then on his life regularly. The gallery owner introduced him to Otto van de Loo in Munich and with Pierre Matisse in New York, both of which also exhibited and represented him. From this time Saura's color palette was limited to black, gray and brown. Because of its very own style, he remained independent of the artistic movements and tendencies of his generation. His work can be seen as a continuation of Velázquez and Goya.
In 1959 an extensive oeuvre of graphic works, including original illustrations to Cervantes ' Don Quixote, Orwell's 1984, Pinocho ( Pinocchio ), as amended by Christine Nöstlinger, Kafka's diaries, Quevedo Trois visions and numerous other texts arose. From 1960 he worked on the sculpture, which he welded together various metal elements to create human heads, all personalized or crucifixions. From 1967, he lived exclusively in Paris. He was involved in the resistance against the Franco regime and participated in numerous discussions and debates on issues of politics, aesthetics or artistic creation. Subject matter and pictorial invention were from then on richer. It created the cycles " woman - chair " imaginary portraits, Goya's dog and imaginary portraits of Goya. In 1971 he turned from painting on canvas from (but in 1979 he returned again to this work back support ) and devoted himself to writing, as well as drawing and painting on paper. Starting in 1977, his writings have been published. He also created several stage designs for theater, ballet and opera. From 1983 until his untimely death he took his themes and characters again and developed them into a comprehensive work.
Antonio Saura died in 1998 in Cuenca.