Eduardo Arroyo, who is considered one of the great Spanish artists of his generation, moved to Paris in 1958 after fleeing Franco's Spain. In 1964, together with Gilles Aillaud and Antonio Recalcati, he took part in the formation of the Figuration narrative group, which would play an important role in the development of a new figuration. Their ideological commitment to protest was accompanied by a reflection on the role of the avant-gardes, which came to light in 1965 during the presentation of Marcel Duchamp's collective work Vivre et laisser mourir ou la fin tragique (Live and let die or the tragic end) at the event organized by the critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot, "La figuration narrative dans l'art contemporain" (Narrative figuration in contemporary art).
Eduardo Arroyo (1937-2018)
Melancolia II, 2002
Estimation : 20000 / 30000 €
Arroyo's creative energy, combining irony and parody, provocation and subversion, has given itself over to a scathing portrait of Spanish society under Franco, in particular by diverting the clichés of Spanish culture in the works of the 1970s: "I was formed inside Franco's Spain until I arrived in France, and from that day on, this memory, the collective frustrations I experienced, hope and pessimism made this country and its history for me a constant reality in my practice of life and work. "For all that, Arroyo's painting cannot be reduced "to a militant action", it is also and above all an "autobiographical interrogation (Robinson Crusoe's loneliness), which it questions on the role of the painter in society, on his power of action", and also "on the situation of the exiled intellectual" (Dominique Bozo). This is exactly the impression given by Arroyo's painting "Melancolia" (2002), which shows an anonymous face wearing a hat, as is often the case with the Spanish painter, standing out against a backdrop of a desert landscape. The enigmatic nature of this work is typical of Arroyo, who likes to paint mysterious pictures without there being any real meaning to be found, preferring, as he explained, "to let the evocative power of painting show through".
