Arturo Souto

ARTURO SOUTO FEIJOO (Pontevedra, 1902 – Mexico City, 1964).
“Fishermen.”
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower left corner and on the back.
Measurements: 60 x 80 cm; 81 x 101 cm (frame).

The son and student of painter Alfredo Souto, Arturo spent his youth in Oviedo, Zaragoza, Lugo, and La Coruña before settling in Seville, where he studied from 1916 to 1920 at the Industrial School of Arts and Crafts and Fine Arts. Following his father’s advice, he decided to study to become a construction surveyor upon returning to Galicia, where the rural and maritime environments would have a decisive influence on Souto’s early artistic vision. In 1922, determined to devote himself to painting, he moved to Madrid and enrolled at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where he would meet Salvador Dalí and other renowned artists. A fan of literary gatherings, he mingled with writers and intellectuals and became friends with Valle Inclán. The year after his arrival in Madrid, in 1923, he married Carmen Alabarce. In 1925, he held his first solo exhibition. That same year, he participated in the “Manifesto of the Iberians” alongside a group of nonconformists opposed to the official art of Spain at the time. Together with them, he held an exhibition at the Retiro Palace that sparked a true revolution. During these years, Souto lived off his father’s pension and the income he earned from decorating porcelain, and he managed to save enough money to make his first trip to Paris in 1926. In 1931, he returned to Paris, this time thanks to a scholarship from the Pontevedra Provincial Council. Enthralled by the new artistic movements he encountered in Paris, he worked intensely and developed an interest in Giorgio de Chirico, who would have a major influence on his work. Back in Spain, he participated in major group exhibitions and held solo shows in Madrid (beginning in 1928), Pontevedra (1928), Santiago de Compostela (1930), La Coruña (1931), Vigo (1932), and other cities. During these years, he experimented with various techniques and developed a body of work marked by a certain decadent style. In 1931, he visited several European museums thanks to a new scholarship from the Provincial Council and signed the manifesto of the Agrupación Gremial de Artistas Plásticos in Madrid. He held a series of exhibitions throughout Spain and made the leap to the international stage by showing his work in Copenhagen and Berlin. In 1934, he was awarded a fellowship at the Spanish Academy in Rome, where he remained until 1936. Upon his return to Spain, he was caught up in the National Uprising and joined the Republican side, devoting himself to propaganda work through drawings and posters. In 1937, he participated in the International Exhibition in Paris, in the pavilion designed by Sert, where Picasso’s “Guernica” was on display. After the war ended, he went into exile, first in Bordeaux and then in Havana. He visited the United States and finally settled in Mexico in 1942. In 1962, he returned to Spain, where he held several exhibitions, though he ultimately passed away in Mexico in 1964, having traveled there to settle his affairs in the city and make his permanent home in Spain. His work is currently represented in the NovaCaixaGalicia Collection, the Museum of Pontevedra, and other collections, both public and private.