Antonio Saura, oil on canvas, 1960
Fighting against tuberculosis, he started painting and writing shortly after WWII. After a few years of self-examination, Antonio Saura developed a new style by the end of the 1950s. As co-founder of the Spanish art group El Paso and representative of the European informal art, mostly the American abstract expressionism was his main source of inspiration.
While in Spain the fascist dictator Franco reigns, Saura makes gruesome, imaginary portraits. His ‘self-portrait’ is one of his earliest works and was created in the middle of a battlefield where ‘grey and brown tones’ clash with ‘black’. His work is an expression of his own suffering. He was a radical socialist who constantly resisted an unjust world.
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