Arroyo, Eduardo.
Works of the artist.
Eduardo Arroyo Rodríguez (Madrid, 1937 - Madrid, 2018) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver with a figurative style, creating political and social works. [+]
Arroyo, Eduardo
Eduardo Arroyo Rodríguez (Madrid, 1937 - Madrid, 2018) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver with a figurative style, creating political and social works. He attended primary and secondary school before entering the School of Journalism, where he graduated in 1957. In order to escape the dictatorship, he moved to Paris in 1958 with the hopes of dedicating his life to journalism. However, the forceful Parisian and Italian avant-garde that he experienced during his time out of Spain, awakened in him a long-standing vocation for the plastic arts.
His passionate anti-Franco criticism further encouraged his concern with art and the avant-garde. He believed that the avant-garde, wasn't changing the conditions of life and the system of domination, but rather it had become part of the dominant culture. He believed the avant-garde had become an extension of fashion in need of change.
In 1960, he took part in the \"Salon de la jeune peinture\". During his first group exhibitions in 1961 and 1962, he showcased next to artists who are now worldly known: Francis Bacon, Roberto Matta and Jean Dubuffet.
The group's most controversial exhibition took place at the Third Paris Biennale, held at the Musée d'Art Moderne in 1963. The title of the group show was \"L'Abattoir\" (The Slaughterhouse). The artists exhibited their opposition to totalitarianism, torture and all forms of repression. Arroyo hung there \"The Four Dictators\", a succession of four characters with clear allusions to Franco, Salazar, Hitler and Mussolini. The event had strong consequences. The Spanish government put pressure to remove the painting, banned his first exhibition in Spain (which was to take place in the Biosca exhibition hall) and refused him his passport (which extended his exile for 15 years).
In 1974 he travelled to Valencia, where he was arrested for his anti-Franco activities and expelled from Spain. In 1976, after Franco's death, he returned to the Peninsula and began a new artistic phase. All these circumstances meant that his work was not known in Spain until the 1980s.
From 1976 onwards Arroyo produced a series of works dealing with exile, in which he reflected on his time banned from Spain.
Eduardo Arroyo is above all a multifaceted artist. As a writer, his works Panamá Al Brown (1982) and Sardinas en aceite (1990) stand out. He has also designed theatre sets, such as his interpretation of Calderón de la Barca's play \"La vida es sueño\".
In 1982 the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris devoted a major retrospective exhibition to him, and in the same year the Spanish government awarded him the National Prize for Plastic Arts.
In 2000, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport awarded him the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts.
