Agustín Redondela

AGUSTÍN REDONDELA (Madrid, 1922-2015).
"Barley Square", 1950.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed and titled on the back.
Measurements: 76 x 85 cm; 99 x 108 cm (frame).
1950 is one of the most relevant years of Redondela's career, since it is the year in which he was selected to take part in the Biennial of Venice. Attached to his figurative language of deep-rooted tradition, his own land, Madrid, was one of the favorite scenes of his painting as can be seen in this work that has as its protagonist the mythical Plaza de la Cebada. An area that was an object of interest for Redondela who also captured in his work nearby places such as "El Rastro". In this work Redondela offers us a sober landscape dominated by an atmosphere of great evocative power, based on the contrast of intense and bright colors that are arranged along all the planes of the piece. The author contrasts the natural landscape with the urban landscape that appears sharply cut against a leaden sky with white tones. The painter leaves aside the narrative description of the landscape to build it using only the color, very worked and studied, and a synthetic, expressive and emphatic line based on thick impastoed strokes.
A mainly self-taught painter, considered one of the most original Spanish landscape painters of the 20th century, Agustín González Alonso trained with his father, the painter and scenographer José González "Redondela". After the civil war he attended classes at the School of Arts and Crafts in Madrid with the landscape painter José Ordoñez, and in 1945 he sent for the first time a painting to the National Exhibition of Fine Arts, signed with the pseudonym Redondela. That same year he held his first personal exhibition at the Estilo Gallery in Madrid. It was at this time when he came into contact with the Madrid School, and in 1947 he was selected to exhibit at the Salón de los Once de la Academia Breve e Crítica de Arte de Eugenio d'Ors. In the fifties Redondela obtained a grant from the Catherword Foundation of Philadelphia (1954), the National Painting Prize (1953) and the first medal at the National Exhibition (1957). Throughout his career he combined painting with stage design, working for plays by Jacinto Benavente, Joaquín Calvo Sotelo, Dodie Smith and Peter Ustinov, among others. He also did some work as an illustrator, including a luxurious edition of Cela's "Viaje a la Alcarria" in 1978. In 1996 the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando awarded him the José González de la Peña prize, and two years later the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid dedicated an important anthological exhibition to him. He is currently represented in the Museum of Fine Arts in La Coruña, the Museum of Contemporary Spanish Landscape in Priego de Córdoba, the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao, the Camón Aznar Museum in Zaragoza, the museums of Buenos Aires, Caracas and Havana, and the Oswaldo Guayasamín House-Museum in Quito, among other public and private collections.