Fernando San Martín Félez

FERNANDO SAN MARTÍN FÉLEZ (Zaragoza, 1930–2020).
“Hommage No. II A.G.”
Oil on canvas.
The frame shows signs of wear.
Signed and titled.
Measurements: 97 x 130 cm; 108 x 140 cm (frame).
Spanish artist associated with the experimental “Pánico” movement, an avant-garde trend that emerged in the second half of the 20th century and integrated painting, theater, poetry, and performance into a single artistic vision.
Trained in Barcelona, he studied at the Escuela de Artes y Oficios de la Lonja and the Escuela de Bellas Artes, where he received a solid education in disciplines such as drawing, painting, perspective, printmaking, and art history, and was also awarded the Prize for Merit. After completing his studies in 1955, he began an early period of exploration in abstraction, within the context of postwar European modernist movements. His career was decisively shaped by his time in Paris, a city he arrived in during the 1950s after winning a scholarship and where he settled permanently in 1957. There, he furthered his training at the École des Beaux-Arts, specializing in printmaking and lithography, and became involved with the leading avant-garde circles.
In 1958, he met Fernando Arrabal, Roland Topor, and Alejandro Jodorowsky, founders of the Panic Movement, with which he would become closely associated. Beginning in the 1960s, he began to develop a body of work that combines figurative and abstract elements, with his portraits of Arrabal standing out in particular as among his earliest fully “panic” works. After a period of intense experimentation, he gradually moved away from abstraction to focus on figurative art of a symbolic and expressive nature.
In 1974, he settled in Céret (France), an important artistic hub in the south of the country, where he continued his creative work until his return to Spain in 1993, taking up residence in Garriguella (Girona). His work reflects a constant search for formal freedom and a desire to break with traditional academic styles, establishing him as a significant figure within the European artistic avant-garde of the 20th century.