.Narrative Figuration - Eduardo Arroyo

Eduardo Arroyo is a Spanish painter, sculptor and theater decorator. He was born in 1937 into a bourgeois family in Madrid. His father is a pharmacist, a right-wing man and a phalangist.

The last days of Pompeii Madrid, 1969.
Six lettuces, a knife and three peelings , 1965.

Biography.

Arroyo studied at the Lycée Français, then at the School of Journalism. In 1958, he left Spain in opposition to Franco. Arriving in Paris, he abandoned journalism to devote himself to his art.

In 1960, he participated in the Salon de la Jeune Peinture. He became friends with the Haitian artist Hervé Télémaque, initiator with Bernard Rancillac of the Narrative Figuration movement. In 1964 and 1965, Eduardo Arroyo participated in exhibitions on new figurations organized by the art critic Gérald Gassiot-Talabot (Daily Mythologies, Narrative Figuration in Contemporary Art) and in a short time became, in France, one essential protagonists of the figurative avant-garde with strong political content.

An activist in May 68, more militant than ever against Franco's policies, he was arrested in 1974 on Spanish territory, from where he was expelled. He obtained political refugee status in France. After the death of Franco, he reconnected with Spain which offered him official recognition.

His work presents militant periods, or in any case violently critical, and familiar periods, willingly tenderly humorous. The images of Pop Art , so close to the world of advertising and the press, nourish his very particular imagination which made series such as those of Mussolini, Franco and Hitler or illustrious figures of the Catholic Church so famous.

After the death of Franco, Eduardo Arroyo returned to Spain, a country in which he now felt foreign. It explores new themes and characters, notably a boxer, a metaphor for the artist. Spain's return to democracy defuses the protest and accusatory dimension of Arroyo's pictorial statement.

Since 1969 he has collaborated with directors, in particular with Klaus Michael Grüber, on the creation of theater sets. Eduardo Arroyo also works with other materials (collages, sculpture, ceramics, lithography, engraving) which allows him to return to oil painting with greater force.

In the 1980s his manifesto canvases were painted in very bright colors, in flat areas. He is the author of two stories: In 1982, Panama Al Brown (world champion boxer closely supported by Jean Cocteau) and in 1989, Sardines in oil.

In 1997, the Olympic Museum of Lausane exhibited, at the same time as its paintings devoted to boxing, its "Senefelder Suite" and Co made up of 102 prints made from abandoned images, in homage to Aloys Senefelder. In 1998, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid presented the first anthological exhibition of the work of Eduardo Arroyo.

In 2003 and 2004 the traveling exhibition of the cycle "Arte español para el extranjero" showed his paintings in Hungary, Romania, Russia and Luxembourg.

A multifaceted man, Arroyo displays his talent in fields as diverse as dramaturgy, scenography, ceramics and writing. It is in this sense that nothing escapes the insightful gaze of this contemporary storyteller.

In 2017, the Maeght Foundation dedicated a major retrospective to him, which will be his last major public presentation. The artist died in his hometown of Madrid in October 2018; he was 81 years old.

Today, his work can be found in the collections of the most important museums, such as MoMA in New York, Fondation Maeght, Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC and the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao.

Exhibited in spring 2021 at the Richard Taittinger Gallery in New York in the exhibition Narrative Figuration.

Robinson Crusoe, 1965 .

Arroyo by Jean-Luc Chalumeau

Eduardo Arroyo, born and died in Madrid, 1937-2018, was initially an anti-Franco activist journalist. Forced to take refuge in France in 1958, he settled in Paris and joined the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, which he largely contributed to radically politicizing.

In 1965, with Gilles Aillaud and Antonio Recalcati, he produced a series of eight paintings denouncing the role, in his eyes pernicious, of Marcel Duchamp presented as a hostage in the service of capitalism. Live and let die or the tragic end of Marcel Duchamp created a shock. The work is installed today at the Reina Sophia Museum in Madrid. It was loaned in 2002 to the British critic Sarah Wilson for her exhibition Paris, capital of the arts 1900-1968 , at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Live and let die ... designed by Arroyo alone and produced with six hands is in fact considered an emblematic work of Narrative Figuration.

A painting also very well known, present at the New York exhibition, Six lettuces, a knife and three peelings (1965) insidiously attacks the image of Napoleon Bonaparte, a character obviously hated by the Spanish revolutionary Eduardo Arroyo.

The last days of Pompeii Madrid, 1969.