Antonio Vives Fierro (1940) - Vista Urbana Barcelona - Xurreria

\Artist: Antonio Vives Fierro (1940)
Technique: oleo , collage\Signature: Hand signed\Dimensions: 50_2_61_cm
Signed in the lower right corner. Dated in the lower right corner On the back located and titled. Measures of the work 50 X 61 Cm Antoni Vives Fierro Barcelona, 1940 i At the age of 15 he began his artistic studies at La Llotja. After a year working in Paris, he celebrated his first individual exhibition in 1962. Two years later he made his debut in Barcelona at the Sala Rovira. Since then he has held numerous exhibitions at a national and international level and has garnered unquestionable recognition from critics and the public. His work can be found, among others, in the Olympic Museum of Laussane (Switzerland) , the Reina Sofía Museum in Athens (Greece) , the Contemporary Art Museum of Montevideo (Uruguay) , the FC Barcelona Museum or the Fundación la Caixa de Pensions. ? ? Vives Fierro is a tireless seeker who reformulates, through the discipline of his trade, his interpretation of the motifs that fascinate him. He is mainly known for his impressions of Barcelona life, which range from the most traditionally bourgeois environments (the crowded sessions of the Liceo, the corners of Paseo de Gracia) to street scenes, with a mixture of costumbrismo and bustle (Los Encantes) . His forty years of profession have taken him to multiple European stages (London, Paris, Venice) in which he has been renewing not only the theme but also the treatment. Since his first stylistic bets, more akin to impressionist/expressionist traditions, he has drifted towards a mixed technique in which the use of collage has been taking center stage. ? ? His current collection in New York, the one he presents at the Rusiñol Gallery, owes a lot to the change that his impact on Cuba brought about. In Havana, he discovers color in its purest state: he forgets the black scenes to capture an explosion of saturation and contrast. Until I started my paintings on Havana my painting was very black. Essentially because he had painted black places. For example, Barcelona is black. (Interview with Stylusart, 2001) . In his latest oil paintings of New York, despite the fact that black once again predominates, we note this evolution through the contrast with reds, greens and blues. ? ? Likewise, the Cuba series represents a definitive commitment to the incursion of images found in contemporary magazines, with multiple referents that it shares with the viewer (from advertisements to logos) . It establishes an intertextual dialogue where the meaning does not come solely from the work represented, but is multiplied, as in pop art, through symbols of our daily experience. The New York series accentuates this collage trend to the point of actually articulating the composition. The human figure is no longer painted and is represented by cuttings. This sensation is reinforced by painting with very loose, free strokes. The painted part is deliberately blurred while the most defined planes are embedded. ? ? Curiously, in an interview (Diari de Girona March 7, 1996) , the painter demystifies this change: Using other media and brightening up color becomes more of an anecdotal aspect than anything else. What counts is the inner message of the work, which is still the same with small nuances, everything has to be said. In short, Vives Fierro experiments without fear, a typical characteristic of the artist who has freed himself from his impositions and has reached the maturity.