.jpg)
Antonio López García (Spanish, born in 1936), Backs (Man and Woman), 1964, Oil on wood, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell Collection, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Antonio López Garcia (Spanish, born in 1936), Sink and Mirror, 1967, Oil on wood, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Melvin Blake and Frank Purnell Collection, Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Antonio López García (Spanish, born in 1936), New Refrigerator, 1991-94, Oil on canvas, Collection of the Artist, Photograph © Francisco Fernández, Unidad Móvil, Photograph courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Antonio López García (Spanish, born in 1936), Portrait of María, 1972, Pencil on paper, Private Collection, Photograph © Francisco Fernández, Unidad Móvil, Photograph courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Antonio López García (Spanish, born in 1936), Studio shot of preparatory cast for production of Night, 2008, Collection of the Artist, Photograph courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. |
|
Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston
Avenue of the Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
617-267-9300
Boston
Antonio López Garcia
April 13-July 27, 2008
Antonio López García highlights the artist’s career from 1955 to the present. The familiar and ordinary of López’s world — the classical themes of landscape, still life, and figure realized through the close examination of his immediate surroundings — comprise this renowned artist’s subject. With painstaking detail and profound adherence to observation, López creates a faithful representation of his humble motifs. His strict dependence upon the truth of his subjects has become legendary — sculptures and paintings have sometimes taken him years to complete — which accounts for the often lengthy creative process for which he is known.
The exhibiton Antonio López García features approximately 45 paintings, drawings, and sculpture by the celebrated artist of the realist school, including nine works from the MFA’s collection and loans from European and American museums and private collections. (The exhibition complements the major Spanish exhibition, El Greco to Velázquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III.
Born in 1936 in Tomelloso (part of the La Mancha area of central Spain), López displayed innate artistic talent as a youth and gained admittance to the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid at the age of 13. In the years after graduation in 1955, López was first associated with “magic realism” and juxtaposed peculiar combinations of images of people and places, resulting in mysterious and haunting compositions. Yet, by the early 1960s, the artist developed what would be his mature, realist period through which he observed his surroundings with increasing intensity, and meticulously translated his view into poetic canvases, drawings, and sculpture. He has received international acclaim throughout the years, and in 2006 was awarded the Premio Velázquez (Velázquez Prize), named after the 17th-century painter (the award aspires to become the arts equivalent of the Cervantes Prize, regarded as the literature Nobel of the Spanish-speaking world).
The exhibitionl presents the artist’s work in three major groupings: Landscape, Still Life, and Figure:
Landscape
López moved to Madrid to attend school and since then has developed a close relationship with the city — one he encounters through intimate moments in solitude and over lengthy periods of observation from identifiable vantage points. His process demands preserving similar conditions each time, resulting in repeated visits over days and, sometimes, years to complete a work. In articulating his vision of Madrid, López has chosen throughout his career to paint and draw the city from a variety of distinct views. The North of Madrid from La Maliciosa (1963-64, J.P. Morgan Chase, New York) is a daunting, panoramic view observed from the distance of a notable spot in the Guadarrama Mountains near Madrid. In contrast is South Madrid (1965-85, Masaveu Foundation, Oviedo, Spain), the artist’s first attempt at painting urban Madrid, which was even more of a challenge, becoming one of his many long-term projects. Created during a 20-year period, the work evolved as did the changing city. Through such intense observation, López engages Madrid, which can be seen in his more recent painting, Madrid as Seen from the Fire Tower of Vallecas (1997-2006, Madrid Assembly). Typically on view at the Madrid Assembly in the city’s Vallecas district, it has never been lent prior to this exhibition. In contrast to his other landscapes, Atocha (1964, MFA, Boston), which depicts the area around the Atocha railway station in Madrid, deviates slightly from the artist’s traditional landscape with the incorporation of a nude couple in mad embrace, unaware of the progress of time and the cold world around them.
Still Life
López’s vision provokes the viewer to consider even the simplest subject matter with newfound significance. In Sink and Mirror (1967, MFA, Boston), the tangible array of personal effects draws in the observer, creating an intimate display and self portrait. While truthful to his subject, López has always challenged himself artistically. In his simple, traditional still life Glass with Flowers and Wall (1965, Private Collection) his attention is not only directed to the delicate white flowers, but to creating a composition that questions and simplifies the illusion of depth through planes of color from a monochromatic and subdued palette, a precursor to minimalist aesthetics.
The race against time is at its most obvious when López draws upon subjects from nature such as those found in his garden. The artist has always considered the beauty of plants in proximity to his studio. One of his most beloved motifs is Quince Tree (1990, Private Collection) and his efforts to faithfully represent it are the focal point of the documentary by Victor Erice, El Sol del membrillo (Dream of Light). The 1992 film captures the loyal and intense relationship between the artist and his subject, and ultimately the passage of time. As he attempts to overcome nature when the tree branches become weighted down by the growing quince, López struggles to continue, rigging the branches with string to preserve their original form. The film won the Critics’ Prize at Cannes as well as the top prize at the Chicago Film Festival (in 1992), and will be shown during the run of the exhibition.
Figure
Perhaps only the artist’s face is missing in López’s close study of his family throughout his career. Maria (1972, Private Collection), astonishing in its realism, is a pencil drawing of the artist’s oldest daughter at the age of 10. But it is in sculpture that he has most often represented the human figure. From his earliest reliefs in painted wood of mysterious narratives, to the essence of his young daughter, life size, in the polychrome wood sculpture Maria Standing (1964, Private Collection), sculpture plays a prominent role in the artist’s work. It is evidenced in one of his more recent compositions to be included in the exhibition, Children (Niños) (1997-2007), featuring small heads modeled after family members. Created in mixed media, they will be displayed in a case at the center of the gallery. Another work, Man and Woman (1968-1994, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid), captures the humanity of his subjects in its extraordinary detail and sense of life. More closely aligned with the figurative work of centuries earlier (as found in ancient Greek and Egyptian examples), Man and Woman also references his pairing of figures from his first figurative pieces created decades earlier, such as Sinforoso and Josefa (1955, Private Collection).
In an interview with author Michael Brenson, López said: “I don’t consider myself a true painter. More than color, the shape of things, their volume, matter and the distance between their different areas have always been the stimuli prompting my pictures, and all this is probably what has enabled me to work as a sculptor.”
One of López’s current projects is an adaptation of Night and Day (2007, Collection of the artist) based on two life-size busts of the sculptural studies of the heads of his grandchildren. He is casting them in bronze on a monumental scale to be placed at the Atocha railway station in Madrid as a commissioned memorial to the train bombing in 2004. López continues to work in a variety of media, and currently is painting portraits of the king and queen of Spain.
|
