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Antonio Saura, one of Spain's greatest contemporary artist, died at 67on July 22nd 1998 following a serious blood disease.
the artist, whose brother is film director Carlos Saura, was born on September 22 1930 in Huesca, northern Spain and started his career as an amateur while recovering from tuberculosis at 20. Saura, who founded one of the first avant-garde movements in Spain under General Franco, was considered as a major artist in his country.
His first exhibition took place in Saragosse in 1950 at a time when he worked under the influence of Surrealism. He then turned to abstract painting mixing fantasy landscapes with abstract expressionist themes.
He founded the el Paso group in 1957 with Millares, Canogar and Luis Feito but soon returned to figurative painting inspired by great Spanish painters such as Velasquez, Goya and Picasso.
Moving away from Surrealism, he chose the female body as a "matrix" for pictorial constructions in black and white with themes deriving from what he saw during his childhood in the Prado museum in Madrid.
The reminiscence of Velasquez's Jesus Christ, the portrait of Philip II attributed to Sanchez Coello and Goya's sombre paintings had much influence over his works then.
"These paintings played a major role in my career since my childhood when my father used to take me to the Prado museum. I once saw apainting by (Salvador) Dali," the Spectre of Sex-Appeal "representing a small boy on a beach looking at an enormous and obscene monster represented in the manner of Arcimboldo. When I discovered it I thought about myself admiring Velasquez's Jesus Christ holding the hand of my
father," he once said in an interview with the daily Le Monde in 1994.
"This painting, terribly audacious, without a landscape, without any presence other than Jesus Christ shown against a black background, half of his face hidden by his hair falling forward, all these were my obsessive themes," he added.
Saura produced several series of works, "Imaginary portraits" in 1958 and 1959, "Selfportraits" between 1959 and 1966 and "Cruxifixions" between 1957 and 1977.
The artist tried to exploit all incredible possibilities with the form of the cross in an attempt to create pictorial phenomenons and to provoke emotions.
Saura used hundreds of photos of movie and fashion stars and of famous paintings, using the images of Brigitte Bardot, Dora Maar and of Goya believing that these could lead to the creation of a work and give an answer to his definition of Spanish painting which in his mind had seldom invented new concepts but managed to adapt foreign models with great strength to the extent of obtaining better results.
Saura believed that Spanish art never followed a quiet and regular course like Spain itself, that its progression was abrupt and somewhat isolated in a way similar to the history of his country.
Saura was used to exhibit regularly in Paris and in New York while retrospectives of his works were held by the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam in 1977, the IVAM of Valencia and the Centro Reina Sofia in Madrid in 1990.
He also worked with his brother producing the decors of the film "Carmen" and produced prints for "Kafka's Journal".
The artist, who was awarded the City of Paris grand prize in 1995, almost gave up painting during the last three years of his life after an operation of the hip and because of his illness.
The fact that he could no longer work in his studio was something unbearable as his love for painting was extraordinary.
"How many times have we heard that painting was dead during this century ? One hundred times ? Still, the news has never been confirmed.
Painting continues and it will continue and remain because it is a natural secretion of the human being and therfore it cannot die. Here is my definition: a natural secretion," he told the daily "Le Monde".
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