On a day like today in 1930, Antonio Saura Atarés was born, a painter and writer considered one of the great Spanish artists of the XNUMXth century.
Firstborn of four brothers, Saura remained in bed for five years due to bone tuberculosis from 1943 and it is from 1947 that he begins to paint and write.
Because he did not have an academic education, Saura began his artistic career as a self-taught artist.
In 1950 he exhibited for the first time at the Libros de Zaragoza bookstore and in 1952 at the Buchholz bookstore in Madrid, where he presented dreamlike and surrealist paintings.
In 1954 he moved to Paris where he first joined Surrealism, a movement from which he quickly distanced himself.
Later, he began experimental work in a series that he entitled Phenomena and Grattages.
In 1956 Antonio Saura made his first paintings in black and white based on the structure of the female body.
After his return to Spain, together with Manolo Millares, Pablo Serrano, Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito and other artists, he founded the group El Paso (1957-1959).
In 1957 he exhibited for the first time at the Stadler Gallery; the following year he participates together with Antoni Tàpies and Eduardo Chillida in the Venice Biennale and in 1959 he is invited to the second edition of Documenta in Kassel, Germany.
During 1958 he painted his first Imaginary Portraits from which the series arises Brigitte Bardot.
Saura was also characterized by his large format paintings whose themes will be recurrent throughout his work: ladies, crucifixions, portraits, nudes, among others.
Between 1957 and 1960 the chromatism of his painting was limited to the use of black, gray and earth.
His series of lithographs Painters it became a fertile print work that he developed throughout his life.
Saura also made a series of 41 drawings entitled Franco's lie and dream: A modern parable in which he characterizes the Spanish dictator.
He was a great serigrapher, he made a total of 632 works with this technique.
He also had a prolific stage as an illustrator in quality editions of literary works such as Don Quixote by Cervantes, El Criticón by Baltasar Gracián, among others.
In 1960 he abandoned the exclusive use of black and white in oil painting and began various series of a cumulative and repetitive nature that he carried out on paper.
Starting in 1961, he exhibited at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York.
In 1965 he destroyed a hundred of his canvases and by 1967 he moved permanently to Paris, where he exhibited regularly at the Galerie Stadler and in the last year of his life at the Galerie Lelong.
Most of Antonio Saura's work is figurative and is characterized by conflict with form. His paintings are expressive and seem obsessive in his pictorial directness.