Antonio Saura

ANTONIO SAURA (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998).
"Three ladies", 1960.
Mixed media (gouache, collage and wax) on paper.
Work classified in the Antonio Saura Archives.
Provenance: author's studio.
Presents label on the back of the Gallery Dolors Junyent and David Cervelló.
Work framed with museum glass. It has slight damage to the frame.
Signed and dated in two of the drawings.
Measurements: 70 x 50 cm; 107 x 88 cm (frame).
Work referenced in:
- Saura Damas-Party- Boisserée. nº 65 ref.77.
- Antonio Saura "Damas-Party 1950-1991 Marlborough, Madrid 25 May-25 June 2005 p.74 nº 78.
"The Three Graces" is formed by three independent drawings on paper, in which three feminine figures can be recognized, formed by impetuous black strokes. These compositions show us a tremendously energetic Saura, one who subjugated form to a jumble that suggests torn identities: eyes that are pure orbit swimming in no man's land; flesh subverted by pure gestural action, without structural support. Saura always moved away from the image of the well-formed body, the harmonious face. On the contrary, he devoted himself to deconstructing it.
Self-taught, Antonio Saura began to paint and write in Madrid in 1947. In 1952 he held his first exhibition in Madrid, at the Buchholz bookstore, where he exhibited his youthful, dreamlike and surrealist works. That same year he visited Paris for the first time, settling in the city. There, his work was influenced by artists such as Miró and Man Ray, and he dedicated himself to the creation of paintings on canvas and paper of an organic nature, using various techniques. The break with the surrealist group allows him to open up to other ways of creation, where he begins to show the evolution that his work is undergoing, which moves towards an instantaneous painting of gestural strokes and reduced palette of selective character, where informalism plays the misleading between suggestive expressions of line and color. He made his debut in Paris in 1957, at the Stadler Gallery, the same year he founded the El Paso group. The following year he participates in the Venice Biennale in the company of Chillida and Tàpies, and in 1960 he receives the Guggenheim Prize in New York. In 1963 the first retrospectives are dedicated to him, in the Stedelijk Museum of Eindhoven, the Rotterdamsche Kunstring and in the museums of Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro (works on paper). Saura's retrospective exhibitions are repeated throughout his career, both in Spain and in Europe and America. In 1966 he exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and participated in the Biennial of Engraving "Bianco e Nero" in Lugano, winning the Grand Prize. In 1979 he was awarded a prize at the First Biennial of Engraving in Heidelberg, in 1981 he was named Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters in France, and the following year he was awarded the Gold Medal of Fine Arts. He has exhibited all over the world, and is represented in the most important contemporary art museums, both nationally and internationally, including the Neue Nationalgalierie in Berlin, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Guggenheim and the Metropolitan in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Gallery in London.