Saura, Antonio.
Works of the artist.
Antonio Saura was born in Huesca in 1930 and died in Cuenca in 1998. He began painting in 1947, while recovering from a serious illness. However, he officially started his artistic career when he moved to Madrid. Throughout his life, he spent long periods living in Paris, as well as travelling around Europe and the United States, though always returning to Spain. [+]
Saura, Antonio
Antonio Saura was born in Huesca in 1930 and died in Cuenca in 1998. He began painting in 1947, while recovering from a serious illness. However, he officially started his artistic career when he moved to Madrid. Throughout his life, he spent long periods living in Paris, as well as travelling around Europe and the United States, though always returning to Spain. Early in his career, Saura embraced the surrealist style. His first works (created while sick in bed) are of small scale, executed with meticulous brushstrokes and well-fused color impasto, illustrating a dreamy and finely colorful world. This style made room for other much freer but always fantastic and surreal works, such as \"El Cementerio de los Suicidas\" (The Cemetery of the Suicidals). His more abstract work appeared forcefully and intensely, representing his subjects in vague forms or accentuating their ambivalance, as seen in \"Piedra, Luna, Cielo\" (Stone, Moon, Sky).
Towards the 1950s he abandonded figuration, creating paintings that relied on stains and gestures. While, in 1957 he co-founded the renowned group \"El Paso\" together with other artists, such as Luis Feito or Manuel Rivera, greatly influencing Spain's artistic scene for the next two decades. Saura's paintings became the epitome of informalism in Spain. Surprisingly, however, Saura returned to figuration, adding dramatic figures that served as historical and social satire.
