Antonio Saura

Galerie Stadler, Paris
Acquired directly from the above in 1990

Gérard de Cortanze, et al., Antonio Saura, Paris 1994, p. 317, illustrated in colour

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the tone of the background is greyer. Condition: This work is very good condition. No restoration is apparent under ultraviolet light.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The dramatic intensity resonating from Saura's musings as to the art of painting is given glorious pictorial form in the image of his Femme Fauteuil of 1984. Executed during the period immediately after his temporary abandonment of painting in favour of writings and works on paper, Femme Fauteuil exemplifies the artist's spirited return to painting with renewed fervour. As one of the artist's most significant works to be offered at auction, Femme Fauteuil demonstrates Saura's long time occupation with the female figure to which he bestows an unprecedented and powerful gravity: seated, captured, twisted yet statuesque upon a throne.

In full, painterly detail, Saura offers to the viewer a variegated map of his own wanderings amongst the great painters of the past: to Velázquez of whom Saura said that his painting was "chaleureux et distancieux en même temps" (The artist, cited in: Exhibition Catalogue, Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna, Villa Malpensata, Antonio Saura, 1994, p.76), and more specifically to Picasso's paintings of women in World War Two, and his portraits of Dora Maar – to which the juxtaposition of the angular distortion of the female figure and the smooth, clear background Femme Fauteuil is comparable.

Through his introduction of an avant-garde language into an obscurantist Spain, in the grip of the Franco dictatorship, Saura represented a continuation of the cubist art of Picasso in which dynamism of structures and disturbance of surfaces are the foundations of painting. This dynamism is made physical and tactile in Femme Fauteuil through the heavy brushstrokes running across one another in a convulsive manner. Deep black and grey tones smear, jut and smudge across sandy ochres in a passionate effort to penetrate the separation between spectator and work of art, submerging us into the existential torment of the distorted figure suffused with the dramatic connotations of the title.