Luis Feito and Paris (1959-61): ONLINE

Luis Feito is one of the key artists from Spanish and European postwar art. His departure for Paris in the mid-1950s transformed him into one of the Spanish artists most connected to what was happening in Europe.

 

After his first exhibition in the Arnaud gallery of Paris in 1955, he regularly presented different solo exhibitions until 1974. Parallel to this, in the 1960s, Luis Feito exhibited in other French art galleries, such as the Grange gallery in Lyon or the Argos gallery in Nantes, in addition to other Parisian galleries, such as La Pochade, Steel and Regards, more recently.

 

He participated in the exhibition “13 peintres espagnols actuels”, held at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs of Paris in May and June 1959. The catalogue included a text by Jacques Guérin as the museum’s chief curator. The works which made up this exhibition were taken as the starting point for the organization of a more ambitious show which, increasing the number of artists and of works, visited the main European capitals.

 

This was also the year of the 1st Paris Biennale, in which Luis Feito received a prize from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), through this university’s representative office in Paris, allowing him to participate in an exhibition a couple of years later. The Paris Biennale —held from 2 to 25 October at the Musée d’Art Moderne of Paris— was organized by André Malraux during his period as French Minister of Culture, with the aim of including this city on the international contemporary art circuit, promoting artists from 20 to 35 years old. This first edition included the presence of 25 countries and Feito, who was considered to be French, was one of the most noteworthy young participants, together with artists such as Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and David Hamilton, among others.

 

The importance of the light factor was fundamental in his work. In the words of the prestigious French art critic and historian Pierre Restany, reproduced in the 1959 essay “Feito: Castilian lyricism and the mystical tradition”, the poetics of Feito’s work lies in the treatment of light in the composition of the painting: ‘‘It is obvious that the imagination of the space is decisive in Feito’s work. All of the pictorial elements, starting with the matter and the colour, are subject to it. […] Light, above all, is a certain condition of space and not a chromatic value”. This careful consideration of light was, undoubtedly, a differentiating factor compared with other art autre artists.

 

In 1985 he was appointed Officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters, and in 1993 Commander of the same order.