Antonio Saura

ANTONIO SAURA (Huesca, 1930 - Cuenca, 1998).
"The Quixote", 1990.
Silkscreen on BFK Rives France paper. Copy 14/100.
Rust stains.
Signed and justified in pencil.
Measurements: 76 x 56,5 cm.
This work by Antonio Saura dedicated to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, was conceived for the special edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha published by Círculo de Lectores on the occasion of its 25th anniversary. Far from a narrative or descriptive illustration in the traditional sense, Saura turns Miguel de Cervantes' famous characters into almost ghostly apparitions, charged with expressive tension and existential drama.
The work fully reflects the plastic language that defined the career of Antonio Saura, one of the great representatives of informalism and the new Spanish post-war figuration. His violent, gestural and fragmented line decomposes the figures to the point of placing them on the limit between recognition and abstraction. Don Quixote and Sancho do not appear as idealized heroes or picturesque characters; they emerge rather as universal symbols of the human condition, constructed by means of black spots, nervous lines and radical hallmarks that transmit movement, fragility and inner energy.
The choice of Saura for this commemorative edition was not accidental. Throughout his career, the artist maintained a constant dialogue with great figures of Spanish culture, Goya, Velázquez, Picasso or Cervantes, understood not as academic models, but as living presences capable of being reinterpreted from a contemporary sensibility.