ExhibitionLuis Fernández, Oviedo 1900, Opening: Fundación Telefónica April 27 CatalogueCurator: Text by Ana C. Más, Luis Feás, Valeriano Bozal y Francisco Jarauta. Color illustrations Spanish 606 pages Prize 5.000 Ptas. ISBN 84-89884-13-7
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Luis Fernández,
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CLICK Digital Edition Catalogue (spanish)
On April 26, Fundación Telefónica presents a large retrospective on the painter Luis Fernández, one hundred years after his birth. The collection is made up of 90 paintings belonging to Telefónica and to other important public and private collections, and represents almost six decades of creative work of this Spanish artist
Versión en español
Telefónica's interest in Luis Fernández is not new. After the exhibit of la Fundación Banco Exterior de España in Madrid in 1984 Telefónica began to acquire the artist's work and today possesses a significant number of paintings which have been exhibited in Madrid, as well as other cities in Spain, Europe and Latin America.
In addition, coinciding with the collection to be presented, Telefónica has amassed and edited the first cataloguing of Luis Fernández' work, including the research carried out by Ana C. Más Hernández. This translates into almost 300 detailed entries covering the artist's body of work, one that is dispersed throughout the United States and Europe, mostly in private collections.
The collection has been presented in the artist's hometown, Oviedo, under the auspices of the Municipal Cultural Foundation of Oviedo, Cajastur, the Principality of Asturias and la Fundación Telefónica.
PARIS: BETWEEN ABSTRACTION AND SURREALISM APPROACHING PICASSO AN INDIVIDUAL STYLE
In the 1920's in Paris Luis Fernández makes contact with the avant-garde currents that dominated the painting scene at the time: Geometrical Abstraction and Breton Surrealism, two opposing, yet complementary movements. He also gets involved with late Cubism associated with Braque, Picasso and Gris. This tends towards abstraction in order to bring about a simplification of the plastic media, a reduction of the visible into a minimal expression of signs. During this early period he is also influenced by such ephemeral currents such as the purism of Le Corbusier or the neoplasticism of Piet Mondrian.
In the mid 1930's Fernández abandons Abstraction definitively and returns to form through Surrealism. At this time three events have a direct effect upon his work: his entrance into Surrealism, his friendship with Picasso and the Spanish Civil War. In 1936 he takes part in the exhibit Fantastic Art: Dadá and Surrealism at the MOMA in New York. His work displays a vision that is deformed, wild and violent, not only in its themes, but also in his use of color. He would see the world through anamorphosis.
With the bullfighting (an influence of Picasso) and the dead animal heads, the artist begins a cycle of work that seeks a connection with the telluric, leading to an assimilation of reality with dreams and a union of the material with the imagination. His monstrous recreations of the human anatomy reflect his connection to German expressionism. He deals with sexual themes openly, presenting his most provocative facet.
Around 1940 Fernández breaks definitively with Surrealism and his work approaches more freely that of Picasso. At this phase his work takes on a strong dramatic force, an expressive intensity bordering on violence, baroque tinges in its directed lights, strong contrasts in light and a search for theatrical effects so popular at the time. This tragic dimension must also be attributed to the influence of the Spanish Civil War.
Midway through the '40s the artist definitively distances himself from Picasso's influences and leaves behind the tension and the violence that appeared in his prior work, to produce increasingly more serene representations, with well-defined brush strokes and colors rich in their nuance. He makes a clear break with expressionism, which was in some respect imposed by his devotion to Picasso, and he enters into a more personal phase.
From this point on small objects take on a stronger position and center role and will come to make up his still lifes, so defining in the creative spirit of the painter.
At the same time, his work pace was becoming increasingly slow, creating a mysterious air - the solitary and hermetic painter that he famously became known as. In his small workshop Luis Fernández begins to separate himself from the lessons previously learned and his work turns more and more private and personal, recognized only by a small group of friends but forgotten by the critics.
It is during these years that he begins working on increasingly personal lines in search of his own style. His work is carried out methodically, almost in an affected manner, preparing sketches prior to each creation, to later add color. This he describes in his book, Las Etapas del Nacimiento del Cuadro (Stages in the Birth of a Painting).
In this phase he continues his research into light and color through his still lifes, at times in forced geometrical representations and others, within the purest naturalist tradition. He also creates a series of pieces marked by the postcubism technique, exploring this in several portraits, landscapes and still lifes.
In 1950 he exhibits his work individually at the Pierre Gallery in Paris. For the first time one could observe the sense of mysticism, the religious aspect and the sacred quality of those things upon which the artist shed the light of his spirit. A year later María Zambrano writes a lovely article describing how the artist subjects his work to a silence bordering on the absolute, capable of transforming the daily objects that inhabit his paintings into sacred elements.
Free of all external tension, he encloses himself in his own world and only focuses attention upon the suggestions of his own creations. Having joined the Masonic Order in 1927, he resumes the theoretical analysis of his early years, putting them into practice in his series of skulls and roses that symbolize the beginning of the world. Thus, he satisfies his desire to delve into pure painting and reach its vital elements: color and form. His Masonic membership, the ideological foundation to his work, is especially noticeable in his obsessive dedication to learning the trade, to which he dedicates a good part of his time.
After the death of his wife in 1954 his interest focusses on seascapes. He begins a new series in which he uses an increasingly subtle stroke of the brush, lighter, with a transparent and delicate technique. Everything is done in light patches of color, characteristic of his mature work. He also dedicates his work to the study of certain animals that become the protagonists of his new series: the pigeon which represents the spirituality and power of sublimation, as well as the horse and rabbit.
In 1956 his second individual exhibit is held at the Cahiers d'Art Gallery, creating even a strong repercussion in Spain, where his work was spoken of for the first time. From 1963 to 1966 Fernández tirelessly repeats the same compositional scheme that would be his largest series: two pigeons posed on a surface, seeking one another in what appears to be a romantic game. In 1965 he exhibits individually for the third time at the Galatea Gallery in Turin, and later in Rome, New York and Madrid.
A year before his death, he is given a late tribute by the French government, which organizes a retrospective exhibit at the National Center for Contemporary Art (CNAC) with a total of 89 of his pieces. He dies a year later in Paris, without having been recognized in his own country.
Information Prensa: Obdulio Martín Bernal (Phone: 91-584-8996; fax: 91-584-0697;
E-mail:obdulio.martinbernal@telefonica.es and Carmen Mañueco (Phone: 91-584-0424; fax: 91-532-3287;
E-mail: carmen.manuecogrinda@telefonica.es
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