Rarely is an artist able to rediscover an entire portlolio 01 more than 30 signilicant early paintings, long thought to have been irretrievably lost or destroyed.
The saga began in May 1954 when a youthlul Luis Feito (Madrid, 1929) exhibited his first experiments with abstraction in what was then the new Fernando Fe Gallery, centrally located at the comer of Alcalá and the Puerta del Sol. The gallery was owned by a lormer leftist Republican member of Congress, Fulgencio Díaz Pastor, recently returned to Spain from political exile.
Early in 1955, Feito made his first trip to Paris, thanks to two scholarships, and took the exhibited works with him. Shortly afterwards, he chose to mail them back to Madrid, a decision that he would soon regret. French customs agents impounded the portfolio, as the Spanish police suspected that it contained anti-Franco propaganda due to Feito's recent association with the aforementioned gallery owner. Even after examination of the apolitical contents of the package, it was still sequestered at customs.
The sender was never notified of this episode, and some months later the portfolio was sold at public auction as unclaimed property. From that moment, both container and contents vanished and not a single work reappeared in a sale or collection lar decades.
Feito went on to become one of the leading Spanish abstract artists, a co-Iounder in 1957 of the famous 'El Paso' vanguard group in Madrid along with Antonio Saura, Ralael Canogar and Manolo Millares. He had given up any hope of ever seeing these formative early paintings again, until recent circumstances brought the
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portfolio with all the works perlectly intact back into view quite by chance. The heirs of the person who purchased the works back in 1955 discovered the paintings still in their original wrappings, and they came to the attention of art historian and gallery owner José Manuel de la Mano, at whose Madrid premises they can be seen until the end of May; exactly 52 years after their first showing.
Thanks to having been well stored and never having been exposed to light, these extraordinarily fresh and vibrant mixed-media works on paper and canvas are in pristine condition. They form an extremely coherent group, having been carried out within a brief period. They communicate creative energy and excitement, a sense of artistic exploration and discovery.
Structurally, they are composed of dynamic criss-crossing straight lines or calligraphic shapes (of possible oriental influence) musically floating on blue, white, grey or red backgrounds. Their scale is small, but their quality is surprisingly high, especially considering that they are totally non-objective works by a 24-year-old artist who had just completed his studies at the conservative Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid and who had not yet had the opportunity of visiting Parisian art galleries. These essential works will now take their deserved place of honour in the complete catalogue of Luis Feito's paintings.
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