Antonio Saura

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1964

Seville, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo; Zaragoza, Palacio de la Lonja; Barcelona, Salón del Tinell; Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes; London, Marlborough Fine Art Ltd.; Paris, Espace Pierre Cardin; Rome, Academia Española de Bellas Artes; Zurich, Zunfthaus zur Meisen; Palma, Círculo de Bellas Artes-Casal Balaguer; and Madrid, Fundación Juan March, Arte ’73 - Exposición Antológica de Artistas Españolas, November 1973 - April 1975. n.p., illustrated in colour (12 of the 28 canvases exhibited)

Colour: The colour in the catalogue illustration is fairly accurate, although the overall tonality is slightly warmer and the grey tones are deeper and richer in the original. Condition: Please refer to the department for a professional condition report.
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Comprising 28 individual canvases, the expansive Metamorfosis denotes a seminal moment in the career of revered Spanish painter Antonio Saura. Executed in 1964 and inspired by the grand canon of Spanish painting from Velázquez through to Goya, this magnum opus is archetypal of Saura’s brutal post-war expression. Articulated in vigorous linear brushstrokes and thick impasto, this physiognomic suite of identikit faces is tribute to an artist for whom a subversion of tradition and the trauma of socio-political upheaval was the principal emotive and creative driving force. Having remained in the collection of artist and friend to Antonio Saura, Gustavo Torner, since 1964, the reappearance of this rare work provides an extraordinary opportunity to appreciate the innovation of this master of post-war expressionism.

Known for his Miró-esque command of line and form, likened to the organic existentialism of Francis Bacon, and inspired by the gestural abandon of l’arte Informel and Abstract Expressionism, Saura came to prominence in the early 1960s for his emotive response to political unrest. After a brief association with the Surrealists in Paris at the beginning of the 1950s, Saura’s return to Spain at the end of the decade precipitated the founding of the El Paso group (1957-60) and a concurrent transformation of his own production. Moving away from the influence of Miró and Surrealism, he began to limit his palette to black and white and would thence begin the series of emotively charged paintings for which he is today best known.

Using the traumatised human body as his anchor, Saura looked to internalise a sense of collective violence and thus began painting crucifixions, imaginary portraits of historical figures, and imposing clutches of anonymous faces. Collectively known as the Crowds series, this corpus encompasses the present work and its rare polyptical form. Usually articulated across a singular expanse of canvas, there are only a handful of other known polyptics in existence (Acumulación, 1961), one of which today hangs in the esteemed Museo Reina Sofía, Madrid. Nonetheless, in alignment with further major iterations in this corpus, Metamorfosis stands alongside the Tate’s Imaginary Portrait of Goya and the Guggenheim’s Crucifixión in conveying the artist’s overarching battle with Grand Tradition. Referring to the inspiration behind his swarms of undefined scarified faces, Saura stated: “Goya, Munch and Ensor are the painters who most poignantly felt the frightening and unrealistic din of the crowds” (Antonio Saura, 1992). Taking his cue from these Grand Masters, Saura's ‘Crowds’ are confrontational and imposing. Meeting the viewer head-on, the many panels of the present work evoke the threatening chorus of a nameless crowd.

Representing the missing link between the painted throngs of Goya or El Greco, the abstraction of Miró, and latterly the scarified heads of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Saura’s Crowds masterfully vent the psychological power and distress of the Twentieth Century’s collective consciousness.