Luis Seoane

LUIS SEOANE LÓPEZ (Buenos Aires, 1910 – A Coruña, 1979).
“Landscape.”
Pastel on cardstock.
Work exhibited at the Seoane Foundation in the exhibition “Private Collections.”
Signed in the upper right corner.
Measurements: 50 x 65 cm; 67 x 82 cm.

A draftsman, painter, printmaker, and writer, Luis Seoane was educated in A Coruña, where he practiced law and was a member of the Galicianist Party; in 1936, he settled in Buenos Aires. In his youth, he participated in student political and cultural activities in A Coruña, and, according to historian and journalist Carlos Fernández Santander, Seoane may have been the author who, under the pseudonym Hernán Quijano, wrote “Galicia Mártir. Episodes of White Terror in the Galician Provinces,” a book published in Paris and Argentina in 1938. In 1932, he earned a degree in Law and Social Sciences in Santiago de Compostela, and around this time he began his career in various fields. Thus, between 1927 and 1933, he was active in left-wing republican and autonomist parties, illustrated books and magazines, and held his first exhibitions. In 1934, he returned to A Coruña from Santiago and began working as a lawyer, while participating in intellectual gatherings with Huici, Cebreiro, Fernández Mazas, Del Valle, Julio J. Casal, Francisco Miguel, and others. That same year, he joined the Galicianist Party. Two years later, he participated in the campaign for the Statute of Autonomy, but when the war broke out, he was forced to flee to the Argentine capital. Once settled in Buenos Aires, he maintained contact with other compatriots exiled by the Franco regime, including the painter Leopoldo Nóvoa and the activist María Miramontes. In 1937, he published his first book there, *Trece estampas de la traición*. Three years later, he founded the “Hórreo” and “Dorna” series at EMECÉ Editores, and in 1943, he launched the magazine *Correo Literario* and the Nova publishing house. Two years later, his “Homenaje a la Torre de Hércules” (Homage to the Tower of Hercules) received an award in New York. In 1948, he founded the publishing house Botella al Mar, and the following year he traveled through Europe and exhibited in London. Between 1952 and 1962, he exhibited in New York, founded the magazine “Galicia Emigrante” and the Citania publishing house, and was honored with awards such as the medal from the Brussels World’s Fair, the medal from the Argentine Senate (1958), and the Palanza Prize (1962). At the same time, he worked for the Buenos Aires gallery Gordons, directed by Roberto Mackintosh, an expert and great connoisseur of his work. In the final decades of his life, he divided his time between living in the Americas and traveling to Galicia, and in 1977 the first complete edition of his poetic works was published. Between 1963 and 1979, he held exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil, and other countries. In 1994, Galician Literature Day was dedicated to him, and in 2003, the Galician Center for Contemporary Art in Santiago de Compostela dedicated a major retrospective exhibition to him, which was later taken to the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires. His work is currently represented in the Caixanova Collection, among many others.