ANTONIO QUIRÓS

A representative of the contemporary Spanish figurative expressionism, he started his artistic education by attending classes of the academic painter Camollano. At the first stage his creative work is much influenced by his aunt, a cubanist painter Maria Blanchard.  By this we mean his first works created in the thirties in which Antonio Quirós compete with the formulas of the cubism: the decomposition of the bodies in geometrical forms.
 
His real relation with the artistic vanguard starts at the suggestion of great writers such as Gerardo Diego and Federico Garcia Lorca although the break out of the civil war closes this episode. After fighting in the republican band he, just like others, takes up his residence in France. His artistic activity does not recommence earlier than at the end of the Second World War. He manages to stage his first individual and collective exhibitions in Paris after having attended classes in the Academy Julian and la Grande Chaumére that little by little clear his way to Cannes, Amsterdam, Stockholm and many other cities. His paintings are considerably altered and focus now on the tendency towards the European abstractionism where the matter is dominant over the form.

Bodegón

Very soon afterwards he comes back to his native town where he changes again the register of  his painting, now concentrating on the figurative renovation of the Spanish painting. In 1951 he settles down in Madrid and five years later he succeeds in making his first individual in the Athenaeum that is meant to be a jumping-off point for being famous. In 1953 he participates in the International Exposition of Abstract Art that takes place in the Museum of Fine Arts in Santander and in 1960 in the Exposition of the Modern Spanish Portrait organized by the Circle of Fine Arts in Madrid.

His works, like the Characters, are populated by strange beings who live in tenebrous atmosphere and surroundings. These are inert, mysterious, esoteric characters submerged in the world of alienation and painted with thick layers of cold colours scratching the canvas and completed with a final layer of enamel that adds this feeling of delirium and unbalanced state typical for the figurative expressionism. Antonio Quirós brought about a personal world composed by deformated characters, machines and other gadgets that constantly deform the reality and rob it of any sense.

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