Luis Feito: the Road to the Internationalisation

“I am who I am thanks to my past. I am the continuation of everything I have experienced. I took every chance to learn consciously, knowing that if I lost this moment it would be lost forever. My painting and my work have always been the continuation of what I see in my life” 1.  Luis Feito

This exhibition gives us an exceptional opportunity:  the possibility to contemplate the set of works that mark the first steps of an artist who actually is an internationally appreciated painter. These canvases and drawings of Luis Feito have been together since the fifties, gathered in a private collection. The fact that it became possible for us to see it now is due to the fact that we deal with the collection of work of art that we can consider as recovered.
                                                                                               
As the artist states himself at the beginning of this text, the painting of Luis Feito is specially connected to the events that have been marking his professional life. That is why in order to be able to explain the particularities of his works that are part of this collection it is necessary to foreground the most relevant facts that played a key role in the biography of the artist starting with his enrollement to the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando and up to his participation in the international biannual exhibitions as representative of the new Spanish painting.

This career was not easy for the painter because the family where he grew up was not proper for dedication to the fine arts. Besides, the Civil War broke out, and then the hard post-war time in Madrid, the city where the artist was born, only aggravated the situation. Nevertheless, the possibility to enroll in the seminary after he got some theological education was viewed by his parents as the most probable one, which became a better alternative to the career of painter.  The decision was not an easy one for his father who was a butcher and who had to defend his only one shop in the street Fernández de los Ríos during the struggle and who thought that his son would help him in his trade, and for his mother who before the marriage was a servant in a house of a French family; the father of that family was the director of the Wagon Lits Cook.

This family surroundings full of affectionate love and distress that Feito was constantly  experiencing  from his chilhood help us to get a better understanding of  the conditions of the artist’s life which can be described as the coexistance of the opposites.

“I have experienced a situation of the permanent inner conflict and of the tension: the Heavens and the hell, light and dark, black and white. For me, this is life. My work is the chain of this internal tensions” 2.

These situations of internal tension were exactly the ones that influenced him and he became aware of his religious vocation. During a year and a half and in spite of the resistance of his family he made a decision to enroll in the Jesuit school; his spiritual father was padre Llanos. But some time later his religious fervor evaporated. And so the mystery and exaltation with which he was starting his religious career turned into the enthusiasm and the emotions with which he starting his career as a painter.

Nonetheless it was not sufficient to have a talent for painting to get to the School of Fine Arts and Feito needed the help nad assistence that came from the painter Manuel Mampaso:

“My brother was a friend of the painter Manuel Mampaso who later became an illustrator of ABC and he said to him that I liked to draw very much. At that time I had already made some water-coloures pictures and copied Suiss landscape paintings from the calendars that fascinated me. Mampaso who was finishing the School of  Fine Arts suggestied that I should come to him and he would teach me some drawings.

And so then I started going to his studio that was fascinating. It was at the corner of the street Serrano and the Independence Square. The house belonged to his brother-in-law and he had his studio in the garret and the attic room. [...] When I showed my drawings to him he said he could not tell me much about them but if I wanted I could come another day and try to draw a still life that he offered to me.

I think that when I came back home and told my parents what Mampaso suggested to me and that I did not want to go on with my religious studies any more they mad an effort and bought me a box of painter, colours, brushes, and a canvas. And so I returned to the painter one morning and he showed to me a stll life which consisted of a carafe, a knife, a vase, and a piece of cloth. I startes to paint without  having any ideas how to do it and he gave me several basic pieces of advice. A few days later I finished the still life that was a real catastrophe but I was learning and getting some ideas very quickly. Then he offered me another still life and he showed how to prepare the canvases so that they would be better than those which were brought directly form the shop. I prepared myself a canvas that was bigger than the previous and started a new still life. When I finished Mampaso was very surprised. He said to my brother that he was astonished enormously because the progress in the second work was amazing.  And  so he decided to put a third still life and after finishing it he said to my brother that he could not teach me any more and as I was very talented I should enter the School of Fine Arts”.

In the winter of 1949 being twenty years old, Feito started to prepare himself for the enrollement to the department of Fine Arts  in the School of Arts and Crafts. He had to combine this apprenticeship with the work in the shop of his father. In September of 1950 after having spent the summer in the Museum of Artistic Reproductions copying the classical images, he passed the exam in drawing of a statue and enrolled in the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando.

The School of Fine Arts of San Fernando

The School of Fine Arts “is the effective organ of  life of the art in our country, understanding that its primordial and the most essential mission is to serve [...] to the education of an artist and to the stimulus and capability of the artistic talent that aspires to realize personal work on its free way of the pure creation” 3,  according to the statement of Francisco Esteve Botey that he made in 1950; he was a professor in this institution who dedicated his life to the promotion and refreshment of the Spanish art. Nevertheless, the education at the school of San Fernando at the beginning of the decade of the fifties was not so free as one should understand from the words of Esteve Botey.  The academic education was based on the concept of the represantation of the nature by the classic authors and it taught the impressionaism as the latest movement in the world of art.  There was then a total ignorance of modern movements and new artistic tendencies that was closely connected with the political situation of the country which government did not approve of the democratisation.

Nonetheless, the studies in the school and the academic esducation were key factors in the personal development of Luis Feito:

“Everything began in the School of Fine Arts. It was a place where one could find everything. Starting with the girls who went there instead of knitting at home up to a group of serious people, eight or nine in number, me including, fo whom it was fundamental. I was studying with Martín Chirino, Julio López Hernández, Lucio Muñoz, Carmen Laffón, Miguel Rodríguez Acosta, César Montaña...  it was really an exceptional group because there were many people who later professionally dedicated themselves to art.

There was a group of students, among them Chus Lampreave y Elena Santonja who walked along the corridors singing and dancing and although it was very funny I could not participate in that because the studies were more important  to me. They spent time playing the tambourine in the corridors, showign comedies or singing boleros as Machín, but surely I was not going to entertain myself, only to work.”

This festive atmosphere was combined with the strictness of the academic education, and Feito was able to take advantage of this duality between the freedom of choise of his way and the discipline of the studies:

“It is amazing that when I was preparing for the first year I started to do antiacademical things, very creative ones, but suddenly I realized that it would get me nowhere if I continued to do things that I liked and that I had to take advantage of my studies and to study really well. At home I continued fooling around but in the School of Fine Arts I was conscious of the fact that I could not waste time, that what I had to do there was to learn first-hand”.

Again this interest in the modern art took the best of him and alongside with his academic studies he discovered the fountainheads of the modern tendencies:

“I remember that the only one magazine on the contemporary art that was in the school library was a German magazine that was called Dans Kunstberg  and I devoured this magazine. Later I could find some things of the contemporary art in the gallery Buchholz  and in the gallery Clan which were the only galleries of vanguard in Madrid at that time.”

Feito got an academic education in the school of Fine Arts without labour that was too hard nor with glory, so he does not have any special recollection. But he does remember about Daniel Vázquez Díaz who was his professor at the school, who supported him and helped in his career as well as other artists of his generation:

“The person who mostly influenced my generation in every respect, artistic and personal, was Vázquez Díaz. We all know him. He was a professor of fresco in the School of Fine Arts. In fact, he was the only professor I would like to have had but when I started having my fresco classes he was already retired so that I got to know him outside the school, and it was fundamental for us. The figurativeness in his works had even features of cubism”.

This last painting of Vázquez Díaz who analyzes the reality with touches of cubism was transcendental for the young Feito. Like many other painters of the generation of the fifties Feito came to the abstraction through a reflexion connected with the cubism that we can call postcubism. The recurrence to the analytical cubism conceived on a strong theoretical basis became a instrument that allowed the estragement from the nature and the use of abstraction:

“The evolution of a painter can not happen due to the intellectual work, the most important is what he realizes in his work. That is, when an artist finishes the academic studies and tryes to create, he does not understand much what other contemporary artists have done. It is necessary to be able to solve the same problems, byturns, as these artists have been trying to solve.  The evolution must start there, and it will do no good only to read about it or observe it, you should get it with your own work.  I did not understand impressionism till I tried to solve the same problem and I got to the cubism when I got to the same questions with my paintings.”

Buchholz Gallery in Madrid: the first individual exhibition

As Feito has stated in one of his interviews, the Buchholz Gallery was one of the rare artistic cetres which were open to the modern art in Madrid in the decade of the fifties. It was inaugurated in December, 1945, in the library with the same name that was in the Recoletos blvd. by Karl Buchholz, a German librarian and gallery owner who was connected with  the circles of the Spanish intellectuals of that time.

Juan Manuel Bonet, in a text dedicated to the paintings of Luis Feito, described the hall as “a key place in the post-war Madrid, a free space where young men aspiring to get some information [...] could get foreign books, something basic to form a set of new images, and where they could contemplate canvases that had nothing to do with the reigning taste” 4.

These were the reasons that made Feito come to think of exhibiting his works in that gallery when he was thinking of the first individual exhibition:

“When I made this exhibition I was still studying in the academy. It was all done hurriedly because I wanted to ask for a scholarship for the French Institute in Paris, and to do that I needed to organize at least one exhibition.

At that moment, it was difficult and easy at the same time to stage an exhibition. I went, very relaxed, to the Buchholz hall, showed some of my paintings, then they came to my studio to see more and they got interested. I was told that they wanted to stage an exhibition but it would be the following year and I told them that my problem was that I wanted to apply for a scholarship that year. So it turned out that they had a free week in February after which there would be Antonio Valdivieso’s exhibition, and I was told I had to convince Valdivieso to delay his exhibition for a week, if I wanted to exhibit for fifteen days. I went to Valdiviesos’ who did not know anything. We went out to take a cup of coffee, I told him about the situation I was in and he said it was not a problem to delay his exhibition.

I went to Buchholz gallery because it was the only one that seemed appropriate for this purpose. In that exhibition my last period of figuratism and touches of non-figurative art coincided.”

The criticism of the exhibition was very positive. I wouldn’t like to dwell on that point because in this catalogue you can find anthology of the texts and newspaper articles, but the words which Luis M. Saumells and María Luisa Semper dedicated to the artist on the pages of Hispanoamerican Notebooks seem to me very exact:

“A very young man, Feito, comes for the first time to the exhibition hall. The first exhibition was a surprise. The discrepancy offered by the artist in that hall was amazing. On one hand, it was such a concrete painting as  the mural painting in its classical sense can be, on the other hand, it was not a figurative painting. Probably these two kinds of painting do not go so far, if we consider them properly. But from the first look, on the walls of the hall, the discrepancy can not be so great.  The images are architectonical, with a solid skeleton, images tangible just like walls. Total abstraction from the reality, accords of colours, rythm of masses, movements, the elements of the painting of unlimited freedom that are valued by themselves. We do not know which way Feito will choose to go. The most shocking is that he seems to be gifted enough to follow any of the two ways.” 5

And really, in this first individual exhibition Feito wanted to show what has been all these years his career, and it implied on one hand works of fantasy connected with the cubism, and on the other hand works of the first abstraction. In the first case it is better represented by the portrait of human beings who occupied practically the total canvas and they are characterized  by a classic influence. The result was monumental images which were akin to those of the Italian fresco pinters, as the artist admits:

“I think that what coould be found in my figurative paintings was a tendency to the simplicity of the archaic forms, which coincided perfectly with the cubism and the geometry and that happened due to a mixture of the Italian frescos and the cubism.”

Connected with this primitiveness that Feito uses in his work, the creation of the Italian painter Massimo Campigli was admired by the Spanish artists of this generation:

“Campigli was one of the artists whom I liked very much. Certainly, there was a certain fascination of Campigli and Sironi in the contemporary art of that time, but I passed Campigli by very soon, because he was a little bit  primitive and decorative for me”

Next to this figurative work on the walls of Buchholz there was a painting that was a first and definite Luis Feito’s step towards the abstractionism:

“[The figurative] meant nothing to me. Or at least its language turned out to be ineffective to express my personal feelings. Picasso used up all the possibilities of the figurative fantasy; after him there is nothing else to do but to repeat what was already said again and again, without a possibility to discover a way to say what will in the end be appropriate. It is not [...] easy to reject the figurative. [...] But one thing was  a convenience [...], and the other was my ambition deep down in my heart” 6.

This first abstract work with totemic rythms on the basis of the geometry had an important quality of  a thick layer that allowed to see some fine lines, just as if traced on the canvas, generating a convulsive order united with a geometrical feeling.

The Fernando Fe Gallery: May 1954

The Fernando Fe Gallery opened its doors to the general public in 1954 in a library bearing the same name, located in the corner of the streets Alcalá and La Puerta del Sol in Madrid. The exhibition hall used to belong to an ex-avant-guardist, affiliated with the Free Teaching Institution (la Institución Libre de Enseñanza), member of the Communist party during the times of the Republic – Fulgencio Diaz Pastor, who in order to open the gallery relied on the advice of Manuel Conde, an art critic and later a member of the El Paso band who would later become head of the hall for several years, and his niece, Mariola Romero.

Apart from them, Luis Feito always felt he was a part of the foundation of this hall, as he told Paloma Alarcó:

“We were Manolo Conde, Fernando Mignoni, Manrique… We were already friends then, we knew each other and we were kind of united together. And then one day Manolo calls all of us: “Listen, I got a call, there is a man who wants to open a gallery at Puerta del Sol, with a lovely young lady who is his niece”. So we arranged to meet at Ballena Alegre (the Happy Hyena). And we all went to the Ballena Allegre of Alcalá. This man’s name was Fulgencio (to us he was always Ful), who was a deputy of the Communist party during the Civil War, who spent time in exile and just got back… In short we all met, this man is there with is niece, with Mariola, and he tells us that he wants to open an art gallery. So we setup the business there and then. Manuel Conde told everyone: “You have to do this, that, and the other”. The artists said: “We want to do this, that and the other”, and this is how Fernando Fe gets inaugurated, which used to be a family library, in which Mariola and Fulgencio had a share, and upstairs there was a hall, which is where they decided to open the art gallery” 7.

With this drive and an ideology aimed at supporting the abstract trends, the gallery opened its doors in April 1954, becoming, along with Buchholz & Clan, an authoritative reference of contemporary art.

Adhering to the idea of exhibiting abstract art, this hall saw Luis Feito inaugurate his second personal showcase in Madrid in May of the same year 1954. The exposition was predominantly made up of non-figurative works and was flavoured by Carlos Edmundo de Ory, a frequent part-taker in the activities arranged by Fernando Fe and in charge of writing this short diptych text: 

“I am glad, that am able to express with the greatest confidence that Luis Feito, has managed, at the youngest age, in an environment the least bit suitable for the purpose, to channel his inspiration through the path so proficient in the truth as the one of abstract art”. 8

During the inauguration, and as part of the policy of support for avant-garde, Manuel Conde held a conference that dealt with the Problems of the Current Art, which was also attended by, among others, Daniel Vázquez Díaz, through his continued support for the new generations. The maestro got interested by Feito’s paintings, such as that the young artist explained on the National Radio through various statements: 

“Paintings always sells very little; things that sell are portraits and still-life pictures, that can also, in some cases, be paintings. No, I don’t sell – those who appreciate painting tend to have little money. Daniel Vázquez Díaz has inquired about one of my pictures…” 9

The painting that Feito demonstrated at this exhibition was not an easy one for the people of the time. This work assumed one more step further into its investigation of the abstract, since the geometry has now become the result of the layout of the painting. Hence, these paintings have been interpreted as military plans and as maps of cities. 10 This comes as no surprise due to the fact that the canvas was perceived to be invaded by pictorial matter divided up by lines, straight and curved, which can well create the impression they are in fact topographical features.

Characterized by the distinct vividness, his lines denote but the importance of conceived geometry for the artist as a way to understand the painting:

“I have always thought, and even more so when I achieved a completely geometric painting, because without geometry there is no painting. Geometry is the plan of the painting, it is what supports it, its shell. I have always maintained the geometry present since the figurative paintings”.

This first and recognized abstract work by Luis Feito, shown in Fernando Fe, is part the works that we can see today on the walls in the hall of José de la Mano gallery, since there can be found pieces between the recovered work and the one that’s being shown today, that used to make up the display of the fifties. So today we can ponder at a piece which has an extraordinary property – the sharing of a joint past.

The dream of going to Paris

As we noted earlier, the isolation into which Franco’s policies had submerged the country, required that the new tendencies and novelties fit in with the Spain of the fifties. This is why, by sensing the world that opened up on the other side of the Pyrenees, the trip to Paris turned into a necessity and a good share of artists of the time visited the French capital once the border was reopened in 1948.

“During that time, every artist that had the opportunity went to Paris.  Every artist’s dream was to go to Paris – some dreamt of settling, others, at least to see what was there. In this country we had very few opportunities to see the art of other civilizations, because there was no institution, where it could be seen. Only in Louvre or other museums of the French capital could you see Greek or oriental art. Moreover, it was the Mecca of the modern art, and if you were an artist, you had to go there to, at least, see what it was like”.

As a matter of fact, a number of bodies and institutions had put in place programs and grants to educate and train the Spanish people abroad. In the case of the artists, the existence of such grants, which were owed to both the reestablishment of the relationships with France after World War II and a slight liberalization which occurred when Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez joined the government, allowed many of them to stay in France.

This course of events was what led Feito to apply for a grant, offered by the French Institute of Madrid, in 1954, the grant for which the artist had exhibited at Buccholz that same year:

“For the grant, Daniel Vázquez Díaz gave me a recommendation letter, and indeed they gave it to me. Nevertheless I didn’t have luck with it, as the grant, which was normally given for a period of two months, was split up into to and one half was given to somebody else and the other one to me. But with that it was quite sufficient”.

Apart from this help, and also in 1954 Feito won a traveling bag at the competition entitled the National Competition of Travel Bags for Plastic Artists, which the Department of Culture of the National Office, dependant on the Ministry of Education, organized for artists under 35:

”It was a traveling bag consisting of 10,000 pesetas. This allowed one to pay the trip to Paris, naturally by train and in third class, and live in the city for a month in a very moderate manner”.

Apart from the grant, Feito completed several murals in the Washington Hotel on the Gran Vía in Madrid, which haven’t been preserved, in order to pay his life in Paris. With these savings, he left for the French capital in early 1955:

“The grants and this money was that with which I left for Paris, and that which would get me through the first year there until I started to get a small income from my painting in Paris, modest, but sufficient with which to live”.

Life there was not easy for these young Spanish men, who hoped to open up a way for themselves in the artistic Parisian world, and Luis Feito also had difficulties during the first couple of years:

“The first three years I spent in Paris were very difficult. I returned to Madrid for Christmas and during the summer, later to return to the French capital to a chamber de bonne, where I lived, cooked and painted. It was an abyss compared to what Spain was during that time, but anyway – at that age, with those hopes and dreams and all the opportunities you had in front, you went through anything. You had the additional exhilaration from realizing all the things you were learning, from everything that you saw, because that was a swarm, a casserole where everything was cooking.

And to this fusion should be added the museums, above all the Louvre, which was the most fundamental and supreme, yet also the Museum of Man, Guimet of oriental arts, the Museum of decorative arts, the museum of Modern Arts, the Jeu de Pomme… We gulped down everything, including the monuments, I remember that the stained glass of Notre Dame used to fascinate us. In other words, you were completely mesmerised. It was wonderful, but it was very hard, the test to endure everything, very few of us did it”.
In Paris the majority of Spanish artists lived in the College of Spain of the Cité Universitaire. This institution, opened in 1935 had been envisioned as a university residence for students of the capital and as a means of diffusing the Spanish culture there. The low prices of accommodation and of the food enabled the artists to stay in Paris. Nevertheless, the Spanish college, which depended on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was a little redoubt of Spain during those times, immersed in Paris of the nineteen fifties, which is why some artists refuse to live there:

“Actually, almost every artist of my generation went through the College of Spain. I never had the opportunity, and to be honest it did not really attract me, because what attracted me in going to Paris was the integration into the life of the city and not to stay in this ghetto of a Spanish college, with Spanish people, although it was a lot more comfortable and easier. People went there, stayed there for a month or two, and went back being almost the same as when they arrived. In fact, I think I never entered on the premises of the Spanish College. I always heard people talk, though since the University was quite far away, I never went”.

Feito did not only move away from life at the University residence, but he didn’t want to interact with Spanish artists, who, just like him, were in the French capital trying to succeed: 11

“I visited very few Spanish artists. Since I wanted to settle and live there, I was interested in being around French people, and not spending the whole day speaking Spanish. I tried introducing myself into French groups or those of foreign artists who lived in Paris 12. One of the few Spanish artists that I visited as he was my friend was Agustín Úbeda”.

The Garnaud Gallery:  First Exhibition in Paris

Throughout the difficult process of clearing the way to finding a French exhibition that would represent him in Paris, Luis Feito decided to try it in Jean-Robert Arnaud’s hall. Founder of the Cimaise magazine, Arnaud had opened his gallery on Saint Germain boulevard with the intention of supporting the degree of the abstract painters of the 50s:

“I was lucky to have brought my sketchbooks and paper drawings to Paris, and I showed them in a gallery, the Arnaud hall, which appeared quite suitable because it was new and included novel paintings. They were drawn by what they saw, but in order to exhibit they wanted to see what I could do on the canvas, so I had to send pictures from Madrid. They went to see them at customs and again they liked them.  In any case, they didn’t put my work on display because of my pretty face, but because during those times you had to pay 500 francs, which was a lot of money. I don’t know how I did it but I managed to find the money and so the exhibition lasted for 15 days. There two or three works were sold, which went to my portfolio, and from then on they were really interested in what I used to make so they tried selling me”.

If we continue with these statements by Feito, we will be able to project the path which his works have followed, that we may now enjoy in the José de la Mano gallery. When the artist decided to leave for Paris with the idea to settle there, he brings a folder with his drawings that serves him as a business card through his journey around the Parisian galleries. Though despite this, as he shows his works at the gallery, the owner insists on seeing some of his recent paintings on canvas. Since he does not have any with him, the artist asks that his work be sent to him from Madrid, where, as we remember, he had already showcased his canvases in Buchholz and Fernando Fe. What he gets sent are four canvases and 27 drawings, those which we can enjoy today. When his works get into customs, Jean-Robert Arnaud or one of his assistants, travel to inspect them. As the paintings correspond to the artistic style of the gallery, Feito opens an exhibition there in February 1955. However, the works that have been brought in from Spain are retained in customs. As they are seized, they are promptly auctioned off in March of the same year, as confirmed by the sticker on the drawings folder. As his works are auctioned off it joins a private collection, which has kept them in tact till today.

Luis Feito and Jean-Robert Arnaud regularly collaborate throughout the 25 years that the artist has resided in Paris and this acquaintance has turned into a profound friendship. Owing to the exhibition that the painter had celebrated in this gallery in 1959, Pierre Restany sums up what the French capital meant to Feito in a brilliant text for the compilation:

“What Paris has brought to Feito, like it did before him to the Spanish immigrants of the two previous extensive generations, is a totally different life, the right to the freedom of the spirit, the open window to the world”. 13

The artist himself conveys to us how fundamental these years had been for him:

“If I had stayed in Spain, like other artists, I wouldn’t be the artist that I am. I don’t know what kind of artist I’d be, but not the one that I am. What I was certain about, and what made me desperately hold on to Paris, was the notion that returning to Spain and staying in Madrid would be akin to a professional suicide. I didn’t see any sort of future in that country”.

El Paso and the Internationalisation

Despite the number of years that Feito had lived in Paris and his reluctance to return to an anchored Spain, Feito never lost contact with his friends, since with some of them he was bonded through a strong friendship.

Thus in February of 1957 Rafael Canogar, Luis Feito, Juana Francés, Manolo Millares, Antonio Saura, Manuel Rivera, Pablo Serrano, Antonio Suárez, Manuel Conde y José Ayllón signed a manifesto which made up the band El Paso. They came together with the goal of giving Spain an artistic future based on modernity. In their own terms what they wanted to do was “to stimulate the contemporary Spanish art, which counts on such brilliant history, but which presently has lacked constructive criticism, ‘marchands’, exhibition halls which would orientate the public and enthusiasts that would support any renewing activities through the times of a profound crisis”. 14

El Paso turned into a plastic group, which despite their unwillingness to subscribe themselves to a particular artistic ideology, they ended up taking the informalism, as the predominant inclination. This other art, as Michel Tapié has categorised it, has been inherited by Europe from abstract expressionism of America, and was at its full apogee in Paris.

Through their illuminating activity which lasted between 1957 and 1960, the year of the band’s dissolution, El Paso had become the symbol of Spanish avant-garde, proving that the Spanish artists were at the heights of the artistic trends coming in from abroad, and it gave the Spanish art a particular touch of progressiveness and the possibility for a different future.

El Paso achieved a milestone in the renewal of the Spanish plastics, thought it wasn’t an isolated case, as between 1957 and 1959 the abstract paintings of Spain has experienced major internalization.

Owing to the judgment of Luis González Robles, who was responsible of representing Spain at the international biennials, Spanish contemporary art could cross the Spanish borders.

If Luis Feito had already reaped the first success at an international scale with the third Prize in Painting of the I Biennial of the Mediterranean, which was held in Alejandria, the definitive advance came two years later. In 1957 the artist was selected for the IV Biennial in São Paulo, and the following year he participated in an exhibition at the XXIX Biennal in Valencia, where the Spanish artists conquered the public and the international critics. Additionally, in 1960 a group of young informalist artists from Venice showcase their works at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Luis Feito had indeed turned into an international artist.

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