elmundo.es

Tuesday 21/03/2006 20:14 (CET)

ELMUNDO.ES

MADRID.- The gallery José de la Mano in Madrid inaugurates the exhibition “Luis Feito (1953-1955) Recuperated Memory” next Thursday. It is a demonstration of 30 abstract works of the Madrid painter Luis Feito, which were lost for approximately 50 years for political reasons.

The painter Rafael Canogar and Luis Feito himself will be present at the inauguration of the exhibition that will start at 19.30. This event pays homage to the transcendent contribution of the artist to the renewal of the Spanish plastic art in the fifties.

The painter Luis Feito in his study. (Photo: Carlos Mlralles)

The period of time embraced by the exhibition fluctuates between 1953, 1954 and 1955. During this time Luis Feito abandons imaginative painting with echoes of the neocubism and adheres to the abstractionism of linear compositions. These three years had an impact on his posterior career. Not only is it an artistic proof, but also social and political.

The Madrid painter displays his first individual exhibitions in the galleries Fernando Fe, Buchholz and Círculo Tiempo Nuevo in Madrid that gain numerous positive criticism, just like the one that was collected by the anthology made up for this catalogue, that defines him as one of the deserving and promising young men nowadays in the frames of the abstraction.

Not only artistic works will be exhibited in the Gallery José de la Mano but also the whole essential part and the context that reflects the political and economic difficulties that the artists of that time experienced. A state of political superintendence has to be added to this, as it was also connected with the year of 1954 and Luis Feito’s exhibition in the gallery Fernando Fe.

This gallery, according to Feito, was inaugurated a bit earlier than the exhibition by a republican communist deputy. When the demonstration was over, Feito moved to Paris with the majority of his creations that some time later he sent back to Spain in a number of suitcases.

These works were detained by the French custom-house. The Spanish Police thought that the suitcases contained communist documents from Paris because of the relationship between Feito and the owner of the Gallery Fernando Fe. In spite of the non-existence of the political activity, as the artist explains, once everything was checked at the custom-house, nobody cared to call him, and so several months later his works were put up to a public auction. That was how his works disappeared.

The remains of that “Odyssey”- the folder with his name, which contained his works sent to Spain, stamps of the custom-house and other documentation – are now exhibited in the Gallery José de la Mano as unedited proofs of that incident.

One of the works of 1954 created by Luís Feito.