ANTONIO LÓPEZ GARCÍA (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936)

View of Tomel loso

1963

Oil on fibreboard

74 x 194 cm

Signed: “A. López García. 1963.”

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PROVENANCE:

Don Manuel de la Rosa, 1963

By descent to the present owners

Antonio López is one of the leading representatives of contemporary Spanish realism. His

work is characterised by its focus on an investigation of reality and López is considered the

father of the hyperrealist Madrid school. He began his artistic training with his uncle, the

painter Antonio López Torres, then enrolled at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San

Fernando in Madrid. In 1955 López was awarded a travel grant by the Ministry of National

Education and he went to Italy, travelling to Greece in 1958. Between 1964 and 1969 he

taught the subject of Preparation of Colour at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Madrid.

Antonio López has held few solo exhibitions, the most notable of which have been those

at the Staempfli Gallery (New York, 1965 and 1968) and the Malborough Gallery (New

York and London, 1986). In 1993 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía devoted

an important retrospective to him. In 1995 he represented Spain at the Venice Biennial

together with Antonio Saura, Eduardo Arroyo and Andreu Alfaro. In 1983 López was

awarded the gold medal for Fine Arts, the Pablo Iglesias Prize and the medal awarded by

the Menéndez Pelayo International University.

López has continued to receive prizes and honours. In 1985 he was awarded Spain’s

prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize for the Arts. In 1993 he was made a numerary member

of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, and in 2004 an honorary member

of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York. He also received the Alcalá de

Henares City Prize for the Arts.

The artist’s earliest works reveal a degree of influence of the Italian Quattrocento, evident

in the robust definition of the volumes in Josefina reading (1953), for example. López’s

concern for visual solidity and for precise compositions led to his interest in Cézanne and

Cubism, expressed in works on subjects relating to his family environment in Tomelloso.

The work of Salvador Dalí has had a notable influence on the artist, evident in his

pronounced preference for realism and in the predominance of line over painting. From

1957 López’s work acquired a slightly Surrealist air: the figures and objects in his paintings

began to float in space, becoming images stripped of any context which interrelate in a

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conflictive manner. An example of this more fantastical approach, which he maintained

until 1964, is Atocha, completed that year.

Such devices became less important in his work from 1960 and López manifested a

growing interest in the fidelity of the representation. He was particularly attracted to near-

at-home themes, domestic scenes and images of his family, including his wife and two

children. Objects and events from daily life would become the principal motifs in his

paintings, executed in exceptionally precise photographic detail. López’s oeuvre also

includes a large number of views of Madrid and depictions of elements from the natural

world observed at first hand . Examples of these types include The Bride and Groom,

Bathroom, Quince and Pomegranate Trees, Madrid from the Torres Blancas and The Gran Vía.

Antonio López works extremely slowly and thoughtfully, searching for the essence of the

object represented. His paintings develop over the course of years and he endlessly

retouches them until he definitely considers them finished (figs. 1 and 2).

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