Eduardo Arroyo

EDUARDO ARROYO (Madrid, 1937 - 2018).
Untitled. 1973.
Collage on tablex.
Signed and dated.

This work is representative of Eduardo Arroyo's mature period. Made in 1973, during his exile in Paris, the work condenses the thematic and technical obsessions of the artist.

Arroyo made this type of collage with sandpaper to make the beige parts of the shoes. The material interested him for its "aggressive" and real physical texture, which broke with the smooth and polished surface of American Pop Art. The shoes are made of cut and overlapping planes of color. It is a synthetic, almost architectural construction, where each piece (the toe cap, the orange laces, the heel) fits together like a puzzle.

In Arroyo's work, the shoe is a recurrent and fundamental symbol: metonymy of exile. Arroyo lived in exile from Franco's Spain. For him, the shoe represents the wanderer, the fugitive or the exile.

Scattered on the brown background, we see matches, some extinguished and others unused, next to an open box. This suggests the passage of time, anxiety or prolonged waiting. Someone has been there, smoking or playing with the matches, and has left (or taken off their shoes). The zenithal view flattens the perspective and turns us into detectives watching for clues on the floor.

In 1973, Arroyo was leading this movement in Paris together with artists like Aillaud or Recalcati. They sought to recover figurative painting to tell politically or socially charged stories, opposing both cold abstraction and the banal consumerism of American Pop Art.

Painter, sculptor and engraver, Arroyo stands out as an important figure within the neo-figurativist movement. A key figure in the new Spanish figuration, Arroyo came to prominence on the national art circuit only belatedly, in the 1980s, after a two-decade-long period of estrangement forced by the Franco regime. Currently, his works hang in the most reputable Spanish museums and his creativity extends to theatrical scenographies and illustrated editions. Arroyo began his career in journalism, finishing his studies in 1957. He then left for Paris, fleeing the asphyxiating Spanish political climate of the time. Although his first vocation was that of a writer, a task he continues to this day, by 1960 he was already making a living as a painter. That year, he participated for the first time in the Salón de Pintura Joven in Paris. His critical attitude towards dictatorships, both political and artistic, pushed him to controversial initiatives. He opted for figurative painting during the years of the overwhelming dominance of abstract painting in Paris, and his first themes were reminiscent of "black Spain" (effigies of Philip II, bullfighters, dancers), worked in a caustic and unromantic key. At the beginning of the sixties his plastic vocabulary moved under the North American influence of pop art, and in 1964 his break with informal art became definitive. His first public impact came in 1963, when he presented a series of effigies of dictators at the Third Paris Biennial, which provoked protests from the Spanish government. That same year, Arroyo prepared an exhibition at the Biosca Gallery in Madrid, which was inaugurated without his presence since he had to flee to France, pursued by the police; the exhibition was censored and closed a few days later. However, Arroyo's figurative option took a long time to be accepted in Paris. The painter rejected the unconditional devotion to certain avant-gardists, such as Duchamp or Miró, which he considered imposed by fashions. Actually, his interest is to demystify the great masters and defend the role of the market as protector and thermometer of art, as opposed to the network of museums and influences paid for with public money. In 1974, Arroyo was expelled from Spain by the regime, and he would not recover his passport until Franco's death. However, his critical takeoff in Spain was not immediate, and would be delayed until the early eighties. In 1982 he was awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts, and anthological exhibitions were dedicated to him at the National Library in Madrid and the Pompidou Center in Paris. Currently, Arroyo is represented at the Museo Nacional Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. and the Museo de Arte Moderno in Lille (France), among others.