ANTONIO SAURA (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998). "Auto de Fe", 1986. Mixed media on paper. Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the Antonio Saur

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19th & 20th Century Contemporary Art - Select...

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Jun 17, 2021

Set Reminder 2021-06-17 06:15:00 2021-06-17 06:15:00 America/New_York Bidsquare Bidsquare : 19th & 20th Century Contemporary Art - Select Lots https://www.bidsquare.com/auctions/setdart-auction-house/19th-20th-century-contemporary-art---select-lots-7081
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• Lot Description
  ANTONIO SAURA (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998). "Auto de Fe", 1986. Mixed media on paper. Attached certificate of authenticity issued by the Antonio Saura Foundation, Cuenca. Signed and dated. Measures: 31 x 45 cm; 52 x 66 cm (frame). In the artist's own words, "The tearing of the glued paper or the cloth attached to it provokes, in the torn covers, a supplementary stimulus, as if it were a previous and random intervention that partly collaborates with its phantasmagoria". In 1984, Saura began a series of paintings on the covers of books, from which he had previously torn the pages. This series was entitled Auto de fe, which he describes in his book Note Book, Memoria del tiempo. This work, although subsequent to the artist's first investigations, rescues all the idiosyncrasy of the series and reveals Saura's originality and skill. In the support, through the use of his mythical colors, he composes a symmetrical face, taking advantage of the qualities of the book cover and playing with the edge to arrange the nose of the character, a resource that invites us to reflect on the oscillation between painting, relief and sculpture. A characteristic that demonstrates the great skill of Saura, who managed to create a personal iconography of form and also of color. Self-taught, Antonio Saura began to paint and write in Madrid in 1947. Three years later he held his first individual exhibition at the Libros bookstore in Zaragoza, showing a series of experimental works ("Constelaciones" and "Rayogramas"), created during the long illness that kept him immobilized since 1943, for a period of five years. In 1952 he made his first exhibition in Madrid, at the Buchholz bookstore, where he exhibited his youthful, dreamlike and surrealist works, and 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 making 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 absent-mindedness 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 took part in the Venice Biennale in the company of Chillida and Tàpies, and in 1960 he received the Guggenheim Prize in New York, and in 1963 his first retrospectives were held at the Stedelijk Museum in Eindhoven, the Rotterdamsche Kunstring and 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 exhibits at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, and participates in the Biennial of Engraving "Bianco e Nero" of Lugano, obtaining the Grand Prize. The following year he settled in Paris, although he worked and spent every summer in Cuenca, a fundamental pillar of his production since his early years. In 1968 he abandoned oil painting to devote himself exclusively to works on paper. 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, among them the Neue National galerie in Berlin, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Guggenheim, etc.
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