Lucio Muñoz

LUCIO MUÑOZ (Madrid, 1929 - 1998).
"Lum", 1980.
Etching and aquatint, copy 4/75.
Signed, dated and justified by hand.
Provenance: fund of the disappeared Varron Gallery.
Measurements: 56 x 76 cm.

Lucio Muñoz, one of the main representatives of the Spanish informalism and pioneer of the abstraction in the country, began his career influenced by the landscape and by artists like Benjamín Palencia. He studied at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts, where he was a disciple of Eduardo Chicharro, and after his studies he became acquainted with the Madrid realists, among them Antonio López. He made his debut in 1955 with a solo exhibition at the Dintel Gallery in Santander, where his approach to abstraction, influenced by Klee, Tamayo, Nicholson and Torres García, was already evident. That same year he participated in a group exhibition with outstanding artists of his generation. In 1956 he obtained a scholarship to study in Paris, where contact with the works of Fautrier, Dubuffet, Wols and Tàpies consolidated his definitive step towards informalism and abstract expressionism. On his return to Spain, between 1957 and 1958, he held exhibitions that consolidated his personal style and placed him in the avant-garde. His work is characterized by a material work, with direct interventions on the support -Punctures, incisions, tears- that provide a strong poetic dimension. After an initial very experimental stage, his painting evolved towards less aggressive compositions and closer to monochrome, expanding his references to Goya, Velázquez, Gregorian chant, Castilian landscapes, Flemish and Dürer. From the sixties onwards he exhibited internationally in cities such as Chicago, New York, Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Munich, London, Havana, Paris, Berlin and Brussels. From the end of that decade he began a more fantastic and nocturnal period, which lasted until 1981. The exhibition of that year at the Juana Mordó Gallery marks the beginning of a flatter and lighter language, culminating in the series of large format color engravings made between 1983 and 1984.