Luis Feito

LUIS FEITO (Madrid, 1929 - 2021).
Untitled, 1953.
Mixed media on canvas.
Work reproduced in the catalog of the exhibition "Luis Feito. Recovered Memory (1953- 1955)". José de la Mano Gallery, Madrid, March 23-31 May. pg. 28.
With the label of the José de la Mano Gallery on the back.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 40 x 50 cm; 42 x 52 cm (frame).
The most decisive period in the evolution of Luis Feito is concentrated in a brief but crucial interval, between 1953 and 1955. During these years a radical transformation of his pictorial language took place, marked by the progressive abandonment of figuration in favor of a fully abstract conception of painting. A language that is evident in this work that opens the beginning of a completely unique and personal aesthetic. As can be seen in the work, this process can be understood as a shift from structures close to neo-cubism towards an increasingly refined abstraction, in which what the artist himself identified as "figurative subject" loses centrality until it disappears.
In a first phase, the work is organized from linear frameworks and dynamic graphics; however, these elements will gradually give way to a deeper research on the pictorial matter. This painting is a manifesto in which the artist lays the foundations of his later production, characterized by the primacy of texture, gesture and chromatic reduction, giving rise to the well-known stages of white, black and their successive developments.
Luis Feito began his artistic career in 1954 and, since then, he has exhibited regularly in some of the most important cities in the world, such as Paris, Milan, New York, Helsinki, Tokyo and Rome. That same year he was appointed professor at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, although two years later he left teaching to move to Paris on a scholarship. In 1962 he became a founding member of the group El Paso.
Throughout his career he received numerous awards, including his appointment as Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters of France in 1985, the Gold Medal of Fine Arts in 1998 and his admission as a Full Member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. He was also awarded important national and international prizes between 2000 and 2008. His work was represented in prominent museums and international collections, such as the Guggenheim and MoMA in New York, the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome and the Museums of Modern Art in Tokyo, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Montreal, among others.