Lucio Muñoz

LUCIO MUÑOZ MARTÍNEZ (Madrid, 1929 - 1998).
"Yellow Liorax", 1983-84.
Oil on wood.
Signed, dated and titled on the back.
Measurements: 108 x 91 cm.

One of the most outstanding exponents of Spanish informalism, pioneer of abstraction in the country, Lucio Muñoz began his career focused on landscape, one of the most cultivated genres in Spain at the time, largely thanks to the influence of Benjamin Palencia. He began his training at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, where he was a disciple of Eduardo Chicharro. After finishing his studies he came into contact with the Madrid realists Antonio López and the López Hernández brothers. He made his individual debut in 1955, with an exhibition at the Dintel Gallery in Santander, consisting of works already close to abstraction, which reveal the influences of Klee, Rufino Tamayo, Ben Nicholson and Torres García. That same year he participates in a collective exhibition of the Dirección General de Bellas Artes, together with Antonio López, Julio L. Hernández and Francisco López. The following year he obtained a scholarship from the French State to complete his training in Paris. There he studied the works of Fautrier, Dubuffet, Wols and Tàpies, and his style drifted definitively towards informalism, leaving behind the initial influences of cubism and expressionism. From this moment on, Muñoz became fully committed to abstract expressionism. He returns to Spain and holds two exhibitions that tell us about the establishment of his personal style and place him squarely in the Spanish avant-garde. The first took place at the Fernando Fe gallery in Madrid in 1957, and the second was held the following year at the Ateneo in the same city. His material painting, his original, sensitive and personal use of materials, gives his compositions a poetic and lyrical dimension. The importance that Muñoz attaches to the support itself stands out in his production; the artist perforates, tears, makes incisions, etc., approaching informalism in a totally personal way. His works, mostly colorful, represent the purest informalism. After a first stage of experimentation with the most diverse materials (burnt paper, wood, etc.), in his final phase his painting becomes less aggressive, due to the use of materials with less relief and a palette tending towards monochrome. In these years his influences broaden and include the black paintings of Goya, the work of Velázquez, Gregorian chant with its solemn depth, the sober and infinite landscapes of Castile, the liberated energy of flamenco and the engravings of Albrecht Dürer. In 1961 he had his first solo exhibition abroad, which took place at the Joachim Gallery in Chicago, and two years later he exhibited for the first time in New York, at the Staemplfi Gallery. Since then his solo exhibitions have taken place all over Spain, as well as in cities such as Buenos Aires, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Munich, London, Havana, Paris, Berlin and Brussels. From the end of the sixties Muñoz began, little by little, his most fantastic and nocturnal period, a tendency that would last until 1981. The exhibition held that year at the Juana Mordó gallery announces the change towards a flatter and lighter language, as we find in the series of large format color engravings that the artist made between 1983 and 1984, prints that will serve him as a way of experimentation to achieve knowledge that he will later apply to his painting. Around the same time he was awarded the National Plastic Arts Prize (1983), and his language began to focus on an aesthetic closer to the landscape, naturalistic and lyrical, again integrating wood as another element. Shortly afterwards, in 1989, the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid dedicated to him the first anthological exhibition of his career (in 2001 it dedicated an exhibition to his work on paper). In addition, Lucio Muñoz received other important awards in Spain: the Gold Medal of Merit.