Antonio Saura
Portrait 144
Artist
Antonio Saura
1930 Huesca - Cuenca 1998
Exhibition
Antonio Saura, Galerie van de Loo, München 1961/1962, Kat.-Nr. 15, Abb. o.S.
Provenance
Galerie van de Loo, Munich;
private collection, Bavaria, acquired from the above.
private collection, Bavaria, acquired from the above.
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Description
• Antonio Saura is one of the most important Spanish artists of the 20th century
• His fragmented, distorted heads move expressively within the tension between abstraction and figuration
• Saura’s works are held in major museums worldwide, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Tate, London, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York
During the 1950s, the Spanish artist Antonio Saura developed his painting style, situated between gestural abstraction and Art Brut. ‘Portrait 144’ is characteristic of Saura’s largely independent style. The Spanish painter’s compositions are distinguished above all by their radicalism. The painter retains the classical, figurative subjects. With his portraits, nudes or self-portraits, however, he subverts any realistic representation with aggressive force and dissolves it into networks of lines and patches of colour. Thus, although the viewer can still make out a face in this portrait, the parallelism of the eyes and ears, as well as the natural centring of the mouth and nose, have been destroyed. Antonio Saura remains recognisable in his colour palette, which shifts between grey, black and earth tones; it characterises his entire body of work.
• His fragmented, distorted heads move expressively within the tension between abstraction and figuration
• Saura’s works are held in major museums worldwide, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Tate, London, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum, New York
During the 1950s, the Spanish artist Antonio Saura developed his painting style, situated between gestural abstraction and Art Brut. ‘Portrait 144’ is characteristic of Saura’s largely independent style. The Spanish painter’s compositions are distinguished above all by their radicalism. The painter retains the classical, figurative subjects. With his portraits, nudes or self-portraits, however, he subverts any realistic representation with aggressive force and dissolves it into networks of lines and patches of colour. Thus, although the viewer can still make out a face in this portrait, the parallelism of the eyes and ears, as well as the natural centring of the mouth and nose, have been destroyed. Antonio Saura remains recognisable in his colour palette, which shifts between grey, black and earth tones; it characterises his entire body of work.