Fermín Aguayo

FERMÍN AGUAYO (Sotillo de la Ribera, Burgos, 1926 - Paris, 1977).
Untitled, 1979.
Marker pen on paper.
Attached exhibition catalog signed by Antonio Saura, Viola, Orus, Victoria, Pablo Serrano and Fermín Aguayo.
Signed and dated in
Measurements: 22 x 19.5 cm; 36 x 30 cm (frame).
Fermín Aguayo was a pioneer of abstraction as part of the Grupo Pórtico de Zaragoza. His work began within the post-cubism to evolve towards abstraction and later, after his departure to Paris in September 1952, towards figurative painting. He arrived in Zaragoza at the end of the Civil War, after his father and his two older brothers were shot by Franco's side. In 1943 he got a job as a draughtsman at the Escuela Técnica de Maquinaria y Fundiciones del Ebro, where he met Eloy Giménez Laguardia (also a draughtsman), who together with Santiago Lagunas and Aguayo himself would form the most stable nucleus of the Grupo Pórtico, pioneer in the development of Spanish abstract painting. He began to paint, according to his own statements, inclined to avant-garde painting and stimulated by seeing a book of modern painting that he bought spending all the money he had and in which there were about ten black and white reproductions of paintings by Juan Gris, Ferdinand Léger, George Braque or Picasso among others. In April 1947 he presented his work with the joint exhibition Pórtico presenta nueve pintores held at the Centro Mercantil de Zaragoza, which included his works along with those of José Baqué Ximénez, Alberto Duce, Vicente García, Manuel Lagunas, Santiago Lagunas, Vicente López Cuevas, Manuel Pérez Losada and Alberto Pérez Piqueras, in what would be the starting point of the Grupo Pórtico, which would cease its activity in 1952, the year in which Aguayo left for France (possibly encouraged by Alfonso Buñuel, architect and avant-garde collage artist, younger brother of the great filmmaker), after making four mural paintings for the bar La Parrilla, of which three are preserved: Semana Santa, Tú y yo and A las cinco de la tarde, the last two acquired by the Cortes and the Government of Aragon respectively. In 1968 he participated in the exhibition The Traitres, organized by Denys Sutton at the Leicester Gallery in London, together with Sergio de Castro, Calliyannis and Lago. Died in 1977, it was not until 2005 that the first anthological exhibition of his painting was held at the Reina Sofia Museum, curated by Concha Lomba and Antonio Bonet Correa in collaboration with the Palacio de Sástago in Zaragoza.