Antonio Murado

Antonio Murado - Without title

Biografía del Artista: Lugo, 1964 A graduate in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca, he quickly attracted the attention of the national art sector, taking centre stage in various competitions and exhibitions. In 1995 he was awarded the Unión Fenosa MACUF Scholarship for Artistic Creation Abroad and spent time in New York, where he would settle permanently. Considered by specialist critics to be one of the Spanish painters with the greatest international projection, his artistic project has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in institutions in countries such as Germany, Canada and the USA. Likewise, important international collections have echoed his artistic creation, including the Philip Morris Collection, the American Express Collection —both in New York—, and the La Caixa Collection of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.

This panel combines two ideas: on the one hand, Murado introduces the concept of the Byzantine icon, and on the other, he revives the botanical series, begun in the 1990s, which is one of the best-known series in his extensive career. These are small panels of around 35 cm in height, inside which petals and flowers are arranged in reserves. The idea of ​​the icon comes precisely from their small size and the arrangement of the flowers and the place they occupy in space. Their convenient size makes them ideal for easy transport from one place to another. These small “devotional panels” presented by Murado replace the religious figuration of the icon with large petals or flowers inside, arranged in a white reserve, varying in proportions. This theme takes us directly to the 1990s, when Murado, guided by his desire for technical experimentation, began to work on botanical iconography. Although it is not the subject itself that really interests the artist, but rather the technique itself and the behaviour of the materials used. Murado uses the blowing technique here, a formula that he arrived at almost by chance, experimenting with the density of the oil and blowing in a single direction. The result was what we see here, shapes that remind us of petals that seem to float on semi-transparent backgrounds, creating a painting where, as he has pointed out on occasion, “everything is abstract and figurative at the same time”.