Luis Feito

LUIS FEITO (Madrid, 1929-2021).
Untitled, 1959.
Oil on paper adhered to canvas by the artist.
Presents stamp of the Lorenzelli Beroamo Gallery, Milan.
Signed twice, in each of the lower corners and dated in the lower left area.
Measurements: 50 x 65 cm; 82 x 97 cm (frame).
This work by Luis Feito made in 1959 is inscribed in the moment in which the artist, already a member of El Paso, had left behind the almost immaterial whiteness of his first abstractions to enter into a more tense and material research, where dark and concentrated nuclei emerge on clear surfaces that evoke an unlimited space. The canvas shows a condensation of black shapes that seem to be organized as an essentialized landscape, a generic territory without concrete references, close to the imaginary that critics of the time associated with the arid highlands of Spain or a "no man's land" loaded with symbolic resonances. This piece clearly recalls the painting titled 148, belonging to the Fundación Juan March, or the work "175" from 1960, currently in the Guggeheim Museum in New York (no. 60,1578). In these works, as in this one, a pictorial exercise is evident that delves into the distribution of masses, the dialectic between light and shadow, close to a baroque chiaroscuro reformulated through contemporary resources where oil is mixed with earth to accentuate the corporeality of the stain. It was precisely in 1960 when Feito was selected by Frank O'Hara for the exhibition New Spanish Painting and Sculpture presented at MoMA, a recognition that underlines the maturity reached in these works, in which, without abandoning abstraction, the artist achieves a visual poetics that oscillates between the telluric, the atmospheric and the cosmic, always maintaining an enigmatic silence in the face of any conclusive interpretation.
Born and trained in Madrid, he was one of the founding members of the El Paso group. In 1954 he had his first solo exhibition, with non-figurative works, at the Buchholz gallery in Madrid. From that moment on Feito exhibited regularly in the most important cities of the world, such as Paris, Milan, New York, Helsinki, Tokyo and Rome. Appointed professor of the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1954, two years later he leaves teaching and goes to Paris with a scholarship, in order to study the current avant-garde movements. During this period he was influenced by automatism and matter painting. In 1962 he became a founding member of the El Paso group, with which he had lost contact during his years in Paris. His first works are inscribed within figurative painting, to then go through a phase in which he experiments with cubism, and finally fully enter into abstraction. At the beginning he only used black, ochre and white colors, but when he discovered the potential of light, he began to use more vivid colors and smooth planes. He evolved to use red as a counterpoint in his compositions (since 1962) and, in general, more intense colors. In his abstract phase, which includes the 1970s, Feito shows a clear tendency towards simplification, with the circle predominating in his compositions as a geometric form. Possibly, the influence of Japanese art can be seen in his preference for large bands of black. Most of his works are untitled, so they are usually recognized by a number assigned to them. Among his awards is his appointment as Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1985. In 1998 he received the Gold Medal of Fine Arts in Madrid, and was appointed Full Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. In 2000 he was awarded the Prize of the Spanish Association of Art Critics at the Estampa Salon, in 2002 the AECA Grand Prize for the best international artist at ARCO, in 2003 the prize for the most relevant artist at the Osaka Art Fair (Japan), in 2004 the Prize for the Culture of Plastic Arts of the Community of Madrid, in 2005 the Francisco Tomás Prieto Prize of the Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre, and in 2008 the Jorge Alió Foundation Prize and the Grand Prize for Spanish Contemporary Art CESMAI. Luis Feito is represented in the most important museums around the world, among which we will point out the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome, the Guggenheim, the MoMA and the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York, the Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Montreal, the Lissone in Italy, etc.