Antonio López (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936) is a leading representative of the Spanish realist movement of the second half of the 20th century.
Painter, sculptor and draftsman, of slow, meditated and meticulous production, his work does not admit simplifications. López only has in reality a starting point, in which the process is as important as the finished work. Depending on the subject matter, he works on his paintings over several years, even decades, as he abandons them and resumes them again, and with each brushstroke he distills the fabric of the object or the landscape, until he captures its essence on the canvas.
In his work the artist tries to capture what remains of the reality that surrounds us, eliminating artifice and unnecessary details, as well as capturing the moment when light and objects reach, through the painter’s gaze, the highest possible degree of beauty.
The exhibition at La Pedrera is the first monographic retrospective of Antonio López to be presented in Barcelona, bringing together a careful selection of eighty works – including paintings, sculptures and drawings – from different public and private collections, such as the Sorigué Foundation in Lleida, the Juan March Foundation in Palma de Mallorca, the ICO Foundation and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, among others; The exhibition is a journey through the artist’s career over seven decades of work, from the first works of his youth in the 1950s to his most recent production.
The exhibition “Antonio López”, structured in thematic blocks, showed that certain motifs on which the artist reflects persist and, at the same time, evolve throughout his career: domestic interiors, landscapes and urban views, mainly of Madrid, still lifes or the human figure.
The latter are the obsessions of the painter and sculptor. The detail, corners, stillness, silence, austerity are the main elements of his personal grammar, in a work that expresses, from the intimacy of the domestic environment, human values of universal character. López, with his great mastery of space and light, often wants to transcend the ordinariness of things and landscapes, stopping time to capture the eternity of the instant.
In his latest urban works, Antonio López has dedicated himself, in addition to his usual views of Madrid and Tomelloso, to a challenge of great magnitude. The artist wants to represent the views of three other cities: Barcelona, Bilbao and Seville, all of which have water – the sea, the estuary and the river – as a common element, according to the artist.
In Barcelona he has started a couple of works from privileged vantage points: one with a view of the city with the sea in the background and another from the mountain of Montjuic. This year he will return during the same dates, when the light conditions are the same, to continue working.
Full article in our magazine number 22