DÍPTICO LUIS FEITO

VAT not included

Diptych November I - November II, 1998

Lithography

Ed. 37/75 67/75

Luis Feito (Madrid, 1929)

Measurements: W 83 x H 101

Luis Feito López was born in Madrid on October 31, 1929 into a humble family of butchers. He had a hard childhood due to the Civil War and the hard years in postwar Madrid.

Since he was a child he had shown a fondness for drawing and regularly painted watercolors. His first lessons were with Manuel Mampaso, a painter who would become an illustrator for the newspaper ABC. Such were the progress in his workshop that encouraged him to prepare for the entrance exam to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1949 by enrolling in the School of Arts and Crafts.

He held his first exhibition at the Buchholz Gallery, perhaps the most modern artistic center in Madrid in the 1950s, when he had not even finished the last year of the Academy, since he intended to apply for a scholarship offered by the French Institute of Madrid to travel to Paris and needed to have held at least one exhibition.

In 1954 he finished his studies and became a drawing professor at the San Fernando Academy itself. He holds his second exhibition at the recently opened Fernando Fe Gallery in Madrid, where he only exhibits non-figurative work.

In 1955 he left teaching and moved to Paris thanks to a grant from the French government, a travel bag granted by the Department of Culture of the National Delegation and some savings achieved with the elaboration of some murals in the Washington Hotel in Madrid.

There he came into contact with other avant-garde artists and learned about the new developments that were taking place outside the oppressive environment of Franco's Spain. His work of these years is highly influenced by material painting and automatism.

That same year he held an exhibition at the Arnaud Gallery in Paris and sold some works that allowed him to continue. He participates in the First Mediterranean Biennial held in Alexandria, where he obtains the third prize, which will be his first great international success.

He was selected to participate in the IV Biennial of Sao Paulo in 1957 and the following year in the XXIX Biennial of Venice, with a resounding success of all Spanish painters, who led them to exhibit in 1960 at MoMA and in the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In 1962 he introduced the color red and circular structures, which would be the first step in the new abstract language that he developed in the 70s. His work undergoes a clear formal reduction, tending towards geometry, with simple compositions and the application of color in blueprints. There is a certain oriental influence and especially of Japanese art.

In 1981 he moved to Montreal for two years and then settled in New York until the 1990s. Since then, he has alternated stays between Spain and the United States.

In 1985, the French State appointed him Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France and in 1993 Commander of the same Order.

His works are exhibited in the best national and international museums and he has received such important awards as the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and his incorporation as an academic to the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid.