CRISTÓBAL ÁLVAREZ
THE ARGUMENT of this story, or rather peripeteia, seems to be procured from the argument of a suspense movie, one of those in black and white. And the matter is that a destiny, borders, politics, and the vanguard art intertwine in this incident that dates back to 1955, in which the protagonist is a folder of drawings and paintings on the canvas of Luis Feito and Canogar, two creators who some time later will make themselves fundamental figures of the Spanish art. Without them the evolution of the Spanish art would have never been the same. Here is the argument:
Exterior. Day. Feito founds himself in Madrid living on his meager salary of a professor of drawing in the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, trying to be a painter in a country that lives in a suffocating situation of the post-war time. In those days, we are talking about 1951-1954, he still does painting that is very close to the already outdated late-cubism and besides, he creates canvases where a figurative subject is presented.
But after his numerous trips to France that he undertook at that time, that was a primordial axis of the contemporary art, before New York robbed him of the idea of the modern art, his wok commenced to be more influenced by abstract art and architectonics, very far from his figurative stage.
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It is a turning point in his career. His works become sketchy, with orthogonal symmetry that, in the course of time, will break and make disappear this dominant line drawing, giving way to the pictorial art.
The transition through informal art gives him deliverance from the imitation and makes him adopt the structure of the painting as a real receptacle of the pictorial creation. The abstractionism finds its way through in spite of the fact that it was not a welcome art in Spain.
SECRET ARCHIVES?
His sojourns in the city of the Seine follow: in 1953, 1954 and finally in 1955 when he is determined to stay there a little longer. During that last sojourn he achieves that a Parisian gallery notices him and stages his individual exhibition. It should also be mentioned that he had demonstrated his non-figurative work in Spain before. First he did it in the gallery Buchholz, in Fernando Fe and in Círculo Tiempo Nuevo, where a part of his abstract and late-cubism works are presented.
The exhibition that is staged in Paris, to be more exact, in the gallery Arnaud, turns out to be successful in terms of a positive criticism but not in terms of sale, because the vanguard art was
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not bought widely at that time. It is now that an argument with political motives of a suspense movie begins. After the exhibition the artist sent the paintings back to Spain, as in those days there used to be complicated formalities according to which it was necessary to render an account to the authorities of the canvases that were sold, and those that were exhibited but were not sold to return to Spain. The painter was obliged, under the circumstances, to send the rest of the material from Paris to Madrid.
During the trip this folder with joint drawings of Canogar and of Feíto disappear literally on the way from the French to the Spanish custom-house (the two artists saw each other in Paris and even cooperated on some works). Any trace of that set of works was lost completely.
The artist starts his investigation and after some attempts he succeeds in getting answer from French custom-houses who tell him that the folder was sent without any excesses from the French border to the Spanish one.
The Spanish artist continues his pursuit and the peninsular authorities reply that they know nothing, that is to say, that the folder vanished from the face of the earth. There is no way to restore it, it disappeared into thin air as if it was lost somewhere on its way to Spain.
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