Antonio Agudo

Antonio Agudo’s life began in 1940 in the city of Seville, Spain, and, since childhood, has been in a constant relationship with painting. He began his artistic studies at the age of twelve in a decrepit School of Arts and Crafts, later transferring to the head building of such institution, where, with more favourable conditions, he familiarises himself with clothed human models, as well as the, then traditional, cast models. While studying high school (Bachillerato superior), he is introduced to commercial drawing in a family run photo-offset business. In 1961 he spends the year in Madrid attending drawing lessons as well as working in a publicity studio. On his return to Seville, he attends the Fine Art School (Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes) while continuing to draw for studios and publicity agencies, and even establishing his own graphic design studio. He finishes his studies in 1967 and travels to Paris with two friends to encounter Picasso for the first time at the great exhibition organised by the Grand and Petit Palais and the Biblioteque National. Antonio continues alternating between graphic and painting work up to 1971, when joins the Fine Art School (today a college) as a teacher of the subject “Drawing of Classic Statues”. Since then, he gradually stops doing graphic work for publicity and focuses fully on painting and teaching.

During those ten years, exhibitions of his drawings, paintings and engravings come one after another in Seville, Madrid, Granada, Washington, Quito and other locations. In his prevalence for artistic manifestations as a whole he also exhibited and was very active in organising the “Seville Painting Festivals” sponsored by “El Monte” (a banking institution) from 1982 to ’84. He was also involved in an event, which promised to continue due to its excellent outcome (the “1st Latin American Serial Art Biennale), sponsored by the Andalusian government in 1986. For this event, Antonio was in charge of the Mexican/Central American section and managed to embark a gallery owner from Los Angeles (Luis Remba) in the adventure to show for the first time in Spain the graphic works of Rufino Tamayo, not without having previously obtained permission from the artist’s wife in a Mexico devastated by the earthquake in 1985. Antonio Agudo has a special bond with Mexico and Guatemala. He has visited those beautiful countries at length almost every single year since 1977, when he went to Guatemala for the first time. His wife, an anthropologist who’s involved with those countries in a scientific and particularly human way, introduces Antonio to them. By his wife’s hand, the painter travels across thousands of square metres and, as a result of those experiences, produces an extensive collection of works, such as drawings, engravings and paintings from an ethnographic perspective, as well as travel logbooks full of watercolours of indigenous markets.

Portraiture is a special part of the painter’s work, due to the specific characteristics of his exploration of the human figure. Amongst works for private collections, there are commissions by institutions, such as three portraits for the presidency of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces in Madrid; a portrait of his Majesty the King of Spain for the Royal Cavalry Society in Seville, and a few others of the Monarch which hang from the walls of the University of Seville and the Royal Zarzuela Palace. In 1994 the Brotherhood of the Christ of the Great Power in Seville commissions the painter to create a Via Crucis (the 14 stations of the Cross) for their Main Basilica; two years of mental and physical struggle followed to achieve a work that was sober and respectful of both religious sentiment and painting itself; a work where, rather than the neo-baroque iconography of common use in the city, the painter emphasized the values of sacrifice and human suffering pervading the New Testament.