Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera presents the first retrospective in Barcelona of Antonio López

The Catalunya La Pedrera Foundation has presented the first retrospective exhibition in Barcelona of the realist painter and sculptor Antonio López (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936). With a careful selection of around eighty works of painting, sculpture and drawing from different public and private collections, the monograph allows you to trace a journey through the artistic trajectory. The exhibition reviews seven decades of work, from the first pieces of his youth, from the fifties to the most recent production. Domestic interiors, landscapes, urban views of Madrid, still lifes or human figures are the main thematic axes. The exhibition can be visited from September 22 until January 14, 2024.

The retrospective of the greatest representative of the Spanish realist movement of the second half of the 20th century shows how the motifs that interest the artist evolve throughout his career. There is also a diversity of pieces still in the making.

Detail, corners, stillness, silence or austerity are some of the protagonists of the works that express the intimacy of the domestic environment and universal human values. Through light and mastery of space, López invites the visitor into a universe where objects are eternalized in the highest degree of beauty.

In Antonio López you can see how in the fifties the artist explored different plastic languages in search of his own and how he uses symbolic and surreal elements to reinforce the narrative component of his works but always working from figuration.

In the sixties, he paints his first landscape Madrid (1960) and becomes aware that his path is reality "without artifice". Since the mid-1960s, he paints and sculpts what interests him without making use of any stylistic resources, so that his gaze is "the only filter and technical mastery is his instrument".

At the end of the decade, using this new approach, he directly draws and paints intimate spaces in his home and studio, and devotes "special attention to light and the effects it generates on objects". From here, López, achieves international recognition.

In the exhibition you can also see how the city of Madrid occupies a privileged place in the work. From the 80s, the artist became interested in the plant theme. Finally, from the 21st century, he will bet on women and the human figure, with a special interest in the nude.

In a press conference, Antonio López acknowledged that meeting the works is always something he "fears" because after a while they may "not like you" and that "would sink him". López has applauded the work done in the exhibition because it allows you to see "deep areas" of his work that are "revealing" and have taught him "a lot about his own work".

He gave the example of some figures installed at the beginning of the route that represent him, his daughters and other characters who have inspired him.

López reviewed the artistic influences that have marked him such as contemporary art, Greece, the real world or the subconscious. Regarding surrealism, the painter has said that he understood it because he "lived life".

"It is something that is not of the objective world, it is above and below. Twentieth century painting gives name to a look that was already in ancient art. We have given it the name of surrealism but this had already been in art for the spiritual part", he noted.

He has also acknowledged that in his youth he had difficulty understanding Spanish art. "It was a huge effort. It seems to me the most difficult art to understand of all", he pointed out.

"We love it because it is ours, but it is an extremely anti-rhetorical and stripped-down art. It is stripped of everything, you need to know a lot about it", he emphasized. "I went to the Prado every week and I didn't have any questions or answers that were of any use to me at that time," he explained.