If Spain is a “little painted” country, as Antonio López (Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, 1936) explained during the presentation of his great exhibition at La Pedrera in Barcelona, ??it is also true that it is not lavish in showing its interiors in painting, as the artist also pointed out. The painters of the Quattrocento used the cities as a background, “but Velázquez was not interested in what was behind the horse.” Antonio López has always been stimulated to know and show what is behind the horse, and the roof and the buildings of the Gran Vía in Madrid or any artery of this or any other city. His views attest to this, and will continue to do so: he is currently working on visions of Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona, ??which he has already started.
But anyone who thinks of the Tomelloso artist as an exterior painter is confused. He is also, and this writer dares to suspect that primarily, of interiors. A genre that for López has also been little worked on in our country, but which constitutes one of the core of her production. The Pedrera exhibition is significant in this sense, because it shows for the first time his project on The House, a tour of his house, the people who live in it, his family, sometimes someone who comes from outside, the visits.
A project that is “like the presentation of her life”, in the words of one of her daughters, María, a project in progress that she has been working on since 2015 and which includes sculptures and paintings from the different spaces, which They are presented in La Pedrera grouped together forming columns that are embedded in the structure of Gaudí’s apartment: on one side, those of the bathroom, on the other side of the Gaudí column, those referring to the dining room and the study of his wife, the missing painter. realist María Moreno. An arrangement with which the painter declared himself “delighted”, “a great success”.
The house, the original nucleus. Because the artist recognizes (or emphasizes) that he does not know how to find, that the starting point gives him everything, And where do we start from, except from our home? A topic that “suggests me a lot, because it is the place where life is made, the interior.” And that seems like an enigma. “The cave,” as he sometimes calls it. An enigma that has always intrigued human beings, and that is highlighted in the presentation of the new house (in the exhibition there is a previous house in the form of a model), which is exhibited in La Pedrera as if it were a diorama , inside a wall, through some methacrylate windows: “you have to bend down a little to see it, because it is not in your eye line, you have to look like a curious person looking out of a window,” explains María López. That innate curiosity that makes us want to know how others live.
When the visitor looks through the windows he sees a dining room with a family scene: the artist, his daughter María, who is feeding her mother. Antonio López has reproduced all the elements of his house, made of reinforced plasticine, just like the figures, the ceiling lamp is the same as the one that hangs in the real space, even the light bulb that allows the public to see the interior has been placed in the same place as there is a light bulb in the royal house. The walls and ceiling are made of plywood. The set is actually a sculpture, and the artist is already working to add the kitchen: “if he could, he would make a complete house,” he explained during the presentation tour.
A work without a script, without rush, without a finish date, without programming. The sculptures are part of the same project as the nine paintings that show the interior of the house. The artist has already painted more than thirty, although they are at different levels, some more finished, others barely sketched; Apart from the first, they all have the same size, an aspect that Antonio López has studied in depth, “of a size that would explain many things, but that would not be too big, nor too small. It is a psychological reinforcement where everything is concentrated but everything fits, even what is not seen, which is the world of the subconscious. In figuration, the size of the support, both in painting and in sculpture, is very decisive, because it contributes a lot, and he takes it into account, it is not a random thing,” explains his daughter María.
During the presentation tour, Antonio López explained the series like this, addressing the paintings: “this is my house, here is the dining room, all this is the dining room, this is the studio of my wife, Mari, more or less As it remained, I use it, but it was where she worked, and this is the bathroom, they are paintings, some are more finished, others not so much”, and so that we can verify that this is indeed the case, she points out: “look, a piece of canvas still unpainted, that white that shines is unfinished… all together it seemed to us that they gave an idea.”
More than an idea, they give a continuous sensation of pieces of a whole. “These are the same room in different light, there it is the afternoon light that comes in through that window, there it is in the morning, with a neutral light, here it is at night, with the street lights on.”
Now, with the juxtaposed paintings, it looks like a vignette, or a cinematographic sequence, but the final result will be like a panoramic view of the place “where everything happens.” Three of the paintings show the bathroom. In one of them, Mari is seen helped in the shower by her daughter and her caregiver. Violant Porcel, author of one of the texts in the catalogue, explains to us that it is a way of approaching care in a different way than how it has been done until now, on the rare occasions in which art has represented it. “He had shown himself with a bitter or compassionate look, but he strips it of drama, it is like a childish look, it makes it another stage of the human being.”
López studies fragility “in a luminous way, with dignity, but not sugarcoating it,” according to Porcel. It is an incursion into the private, as the painter has done since his beginnings, he enters an intimate moment, but without humiliating any element, giving dignity to everything. Now care is at the forefront in an increasingly aging society. “Without intending it, Antonio López has put it in plain sight, now he is reflecting a lot on all of this, and he also does it, from the perspective of everyday life.”
Home. In front of the series of paintings and near the new house being planned, we find the Casa de Poniente, 2010-2011, a model, a small-scale reproduction to which foundations were added, “which is a very abstract thing, as if outside the world of feelings, the world that sustains what is above,” adds María López. To reinforce this idea, the artist has installed a high relief in the shape of a woman’s perineum beneath the model. The high relief is reflected in a mirror. In recent years, Antonio López has been introducing elements of the subconscious, which have to do with people’s eroticism.
One might have the feeling that so many projects related to the house, the paintings, the model, could mean a kind of withdrawal for an older Antonio López. But that’s not the case, his works are multiple right now, from his urban views to the doors of the Burgos cathedral. “He continues to get up with the same energy that he had when he was 14 years old,” adds Porcel. Perhaps because he has reasons to do so: “the real world always surprises me,” the painter slipped in during the visit. That ability to surprise must be his secret.
Antonio Lopez Catalonia La Pedrera Foundation. Barcelona www.lapedrera.com. Until January 14. Later it can be seen in the Drents Museum, Assen, Netherlands
