Antonio Saura

Mujer con sombrero V, 1990

Aguafuerte y aguatinta

49.5 x 38 cm

about Antonio Saura

Huesca, 1930

Antonio Saura (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998) was one of the great renovators of 20th-century Spanish painting and a key figure in postwar European art.

Self-taught, he began painting within a surrealist framework but soon evolved toward a form of gestural and expressionist abstraction, characterized by an austere palette (black, grey, white, and ochre) and by a contained energy that turned each stroke into an emotional and political assertion. A founder of the El Paso group (1957), Saura advocated for a profound, intense, and existential painting practice, understood as an act of resistance against the cultural repression of the Franco regime.

His artwork is structured through major series (Crucifixions, Damas, Imaginary Portraits, Crowds, Dogs) in which he explored the human figure through expressive distortion, psychological tension, and the symbolic force of gesture.

From the 1970s onward, he expanded his activity into writing, drawing, and stage design, while maintaining his role as a critical intellectual voice. His late production, especially the Dora Maar series, is considered one of the highlights of his career, where he pushed his visual language and humanistic vision to their fullest expression.