Antonio Saura was born September 22, 1930 in Huesca, Aragon. He lived with his family in Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona. From a young age, Saura accompanies  his father to the Prado Museum, where he is struck by Velasquez’s Crucificado Cristo (1632) and by Goya’s the Perro semihundido (1821-1823), works that will have an influence on his future work. His childhood is greatly changed and upset by the Spanish Civil War, with its visions of horror that will forever mark him.

Self-taught, he begins to paint and to draw in 1947 in Madrid, but is held back by tuberculosis and immobilized for five years. He realizes his first studies and first pictorial experiences. Antonio Saura shows the influence of Arp and Tanguy. He already distinguishes himself by a personal style created from numerous drawings and paintings of a dream-like and surrealist character, most often representing imaginary landscapes for which he uses flat, smooth material rich in color. Between 1948 and 1950, he paints the series Constellations, in which he is influenced by Miro and surrealism. His first personal exposition is organized in 1950 in Sargosse.

During his initial stay in Paris in 1952, then 1954 and then 1955, he meets Benjamin Péret, and there works with the surrealist group. Disappointed in the experience, he seeks refuge in an informal painting that to him seems the only kind able to liberate the expression of pure psychic automatism. He thus uses the technique of scraping and adopts a gestural style and an abstract painting that is always colorful, with a conception that is organic and random. Thus appear forms that become rather archetypes of the female body or the human figure. These two themes will occupy the essence of his work.

In 1956, Saura undertakes the large series Women, Nudes, Self-Portraits, Shrouds, and Crucifixions, which he paints as much on canvas as on paper. In Madrid in 1957, he founds the group El Paso, which he directs until its dissolution in 1960. The group’s manifesto expresses the wish to create a new European pictorial language. El Paso advocates the rejection of classical criteria: figuration, composition, balance, beauty. These years see the development of Spanish informal art, of which Antonio Saura is one of its principle members.

He takes part in the Venice Biennale in 1958 and in the Documenta in 1960. His first individual exposition is at Rodolphe Stadler in Paris, where he will exhibit regularly, and who will introduce him to Otto van de Loo in Munich and Pierre Matisse in New York, who will equally exhibit and represent him. Saura now limits his palette to blacks, grays, and browns. He affirms his own style independent of the movements and tendencies of his generation.

In 1959 he becomes the author of a prolifically printed body of work; he illustrates numerous works such as Cervantes’ Don Quijote, Orwell’s 1984, Nostlinger’s adaptation of Pinocchio, Kafka’s Tagebucher, Quevedo’s Three Visions, and many others. Saura begins, in 1960, to sculpt, and creates works composed of welded metal elements that represent the human figure, characters, and crucifixions.

In 1967, he definitively moves to Paris, where he actively takes part in the opposition to Franco’s dictatorship and participates in numerous discussions and debates in the realm of politics, aesthetics, and of artistic creation. Antonio Saura amplifies his thematic and pictorial register. Thus appear, with his series of Femme-fauteil, the series of Portrait imaginaire, Chien de Goya, and Portrait imaginaire de Goya.

In 1971 he abandons canvas painting (which he will pick up again in 1979) in order to devote himself to writing and drawing, as well as to paintings on paper. In 1977, Saura undertakes the publication of his writings, creating several scenographies for theater, ballet, and Opera. In 1983 after its premature abandon, he once more picks up and develops the ensemble of his themes and figures. First in 1991 and then in 1995, Antonio Saura will will work with his father, the celebrated director Carlos Saura, on two versions of the opera Carmen. His work is on the walls of all major museums. He dies July 22, 1998 in Cuenca, Spain.

2008 will be the year of Antonio Saura at the Musée des Abettoirs. Until February 2009, no less than six expositions of this anti-Franco Spanish artist will be held. Born in 1930 and passing away in 1998, Antonio Saura marked the post-Picasso generation with works satirical, political, and often hallucinatory in both their forms and their colors.