Antonio Saura

Huesca (Spain), 1930 – Cuenca (Spain), 1998

Antonio Saura, self-taught writer and painter whose works, framed in the early 1950s, show an obvious surrealist influence, participates in the Group Show “Tendencias I de la Casa Americana” in 1952, when he also makes his first trip to Paris. Between 1954 and 1956 he began experimental work and temporarily focused on abstraction. In 1956 he abandoned pure abstraction and focused primarily on representing the female body with strong and violent traces and the almost exclusive use of black and white. In 1957 he founded El Paso with other artists including Millares, Serrano, Canogar and Feito.

In 1960 he received the Guggenheim Prize in New York, and a year later in the same city he held an exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery.

At the beginning of the 80’s he received several titles from various cultural institutions: title of Knight of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture (1981), Gold Medal of Fine Arts from the Spanish Ministry of Culture (1982) and Medal of Gold of the City of Huesca City Council (1982).