Antonio López García - Misplaced Pages

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For other people also named Antonio Lopez, see Antonio Lopez (disambiguation).

*Two Backs (Male-Female)*, pencil on paper, 38cm x 54cm, 1964 by Antonio Lopez Garcia,

Antonio López García (born Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936) is a Spanish painter and sculptor, known for his realistic style. He is criticized by some art critics for neo-academism, but praised by others, like Robert Hughes, who consider him a master realist. His style sometimes is deemed hyperrealistic. His painting was the subject of the film El Sol del Membrillo, by Victor Erice, in 1993.

Early life

Antonio Lopez Garcia is a Spanish painter and sculptor, born in Tomelloso, in 1936, few months before the beginning of the Civil War. His family were farmers and it seemed that Antonio would continue in that tradition but his early facility for drawing caught the attention of his uncle Antonio Lopez Torres, a local painter of landscapes, who gave him first lessons. Thanks to his uncle’s support, he was able to dedicate himself to painting.

The Postwar Period Madrid

Between 1950 and 1955 he studied art at the School of Art in Madrid, winning a number of prizes. Whilst at the School he developed a friendship with Maria Moreno - also a painter, with whom he would marry in 1961. He also formed friendships with Francisco Lopez Hernandez, Amalia Avia and Isabel Quintanilla. Out of this nucleus a realist group was formed in Madrid. The Madrid of the postwar period was very isolated from the international panorama of the arts and the culture. All the information that Antonio Lopez Garcia had at that time on contemporary art was derived from library books at the school. He gradually became aware of Picasso and other great artists of the time.

In 1955, a scholarship allowed him to travel to Italy with Francisco Lopez and study Italian painting from the Renaissance. During this period he began to revaluate Spanish painting in the Prado, specially Velazquez, a constant reference.

Magical Realism

In 1957, his work registers a certain surreal quality. Figures and objects appear to float in the space and images removed from context from which they are related begin to populate his pictures. The fantastic vein stays at least until 1964.

Realism

During this period Antonio Lopez shows an increasing interest in the representation of objects, independently of their contained narrative load. Magic Realism continued to influence his work through the mid-1960s, but gradually, as he says, "the physical world gained more prestige in my eyes." In fact he had never abandoned it. The 1959 oil Francisco Carretero and A. López García Talking, like many portraits and townscapes of this period, is devoid of surrealistic devices. So are Autumn (1961) and The Sea (1961-70). Some of his relief sculptures conjure fantastic episodes, such as The Apparition (1963) in which a child hovers mid-air against a wall, gliding toward an open door. There are many affinities with the Tuscan Renaissance in his work in three dimensions. The ethereal Head of Carmencita (1965-68), for example, might at first glance be a quattrocento Florentine bronze by Desiderio da Settignano. García's painting also reverberates with the art of the past. The Grapevine (1960) evokes Tiepolo's sunlight, the Quince Tree (1962) Chardin's dusky murk, and other paintings echo Old Masters from Dürer to Degas.

The beauty of García's own work begins with an appreciation of his craft. In such works as The Sideboard (1965-66), or the atmospheric views of Madrid from the 1970s there is an astonishing perception and understanding of the beauty of the objects he portrays.

Though García is devoted to the mundane--he depicts humble people, buildings, plants, and cluttered interiors--his portrayal of these subjects is compelling and beautiful. In his hands, starkly lit studies of his studio or bathroom beguile like rare jewels. The red brick wall in his backyard becomes a subject of tremendous interest. His extraordinary deftness prolongs our attention to these simple forms, often leading us to re-examine our own experience of ordinary objects.

He begin to paint panoramic views of Madrid from about 1960. His work from this period began to attract recognition, first national - in 1961 in his first solo show in Madrid and later internationally in 1965 and 1968, at the Staempfli Gallery in New York. Antonio Lopez faithfully followed familiar subjects, homemade scenes, images of women, anonymous and humble objects of domestic surroundings, spaces desolated, images of his garden and lanscape. The pictures are sometimes worked on for more than twenty years, some of them remain unfinished.

As the artist explains, "the pictorial nucleus begins to grow and you work until the whole surface has an expressive intensity equivalent to what you have before you, converted into a pictorial reality."

He is a versatile realist, proficient in the traditional media of pencil drawing, oil painting on board, carved wood sculpture, and bas relief in plaster.

Exhibitions

Because he is not prolific, García has had only a handful of one-artist shows. Three have been in New York: two in the 1960s and one, in 1986, at his current representative, the Marlborough Gallery. His work is in several major U.S. museum collections.

*Street of Santa Rita*, oil on canvas, 1961 by Antonio Lopez Garcia,

Recognition and influence

During most of his career Antonio Lopez Garcia worked in the middle of an artistic panorama dominated first by the abstraction and later by conceptual currents. In the Sixties and good part of seventies his prestige quietly grew. It is possible to establish links between his work and the new European figurative tendencies or the American hyperrealism.

Films

López is featured in an award-winning 1990 film, "Dream of Light (Quince Tree of the Sun", directed by Victor Erice. This hard-to-find but fascinating film portrays López's struggles to paint, and then draw, a small quince tree growing in the backyard of his studio. The film gives considerable attention to his almost fanatically exacting working methods.

*Irises and Roses*, oil on canvas, 1977-80 by Antonio Lopez Garcia,

Collections

Reina Sofía National Museum, Madrid, Spain
Museum of Fine Art, Boston, USA

References

Antonio López García by Francisco Calvo Serraller, Edward J. Sullivan, and Michael Brenson, Rizzoli, pp. 358
Quotes are from Michael Brenson's interview with the artist in the Rizzoli monograph, and from Antonio López García, "Una España Velazqueña," Blanco y Negro (Sunday magazine section of ABC, Madrid) Jan. 28, 1990, pp. XIX-XX
Jonathan Brown, The Golden Age of Spanish Painting, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 310.