ANTONIO PÉREZ RUBIO

Without a doubt, Antonio Pérez Rubio is one of the most prominent Spanish painters of the last third of the 19th century who specialized, in general terms, in the realization of works of small size and with a trifling or anecdotic subject, and consequently, distant from the solemnity of the great subjects of the imperial historical paintings which allowed him to focus his attention on the formal find of colour and illumination.  Really, his painting is characterized by a palpitant chromatism applied to the canvas by delicate touches of an accurate brush that dilute profiles and silhouettes, combining in this way the best of the Goya tradition and at the same time introducing a totally new look with respect to the paintings of Leonardo Alenza or Lucas Villaamil.

Majos on the Meadow of Corregidor

On the other hand, these evasive and distant arguments or, in different periods of his career, those subjects evoked by the surrounding bourgeois reality, are not in contrast with the ancient artistic culture. Much earlier, it was exactly this reality that was hidden and that was giving consistence to his creations which gave an impression to belong to other times and places, especially due to the imaginary surroundings of imagined scenes of action and contexts of the 17th and 18th centuries. A Bohemian artist by his temperament, Pérez Rubio was not nevertheless devoid of public laurels.

Claudio Coello 6 28001 Madrid tel. (34) 91 435 0174 galeria@josedelamano.com