Vintage painting by Antonio José Murado, Spain 1993

Signed in Madrid in 1993, this work by Antonio José Murado synthesizes the aspects of expressionist figuration, a trend to which the artist would be related specifically during the decade of the nineties. We see how it represents a landscape tending toward abstraction, in which the color green stands out, a tone used largely by the painter during that season. By renouncing the material, the artist will give rise to works characterized by pictorial experimentation and play with representation; blurring the limits between the pictorial space and the image, with subtle and veiled results that exude dreaminess and romanticism. It is precisely in this context that the work we present is framed. Since 1990, his production has been based on large-format works that combine figuration and landscaping, which increasingly tend towards abstraction. As we already mentioned, his work is characterized by pictorial experimentation, with frequent play between abstraction and figuration since, as the author himself points out: «I have always thought that there is not much difference between the abstract and the figurative and I do not believe That is a very accurate classification for painting. It seems to me that everything is abstract and everything is figurative. My new paintings, in particular, are a mix of both. The theme is abstract and the treatment is figurative in the sense that there is not the representation of a reality, but rather the realization of a reality. I have never wanted to represent an image already seen. In my work I try to propose an investigation of virtual space..." He recognizes himself as a perfectionist and obsessive in his work, something that his works reveal and although several books have been written about him, for him personally, the best is the one written by the art historian María de la Vega. It is the result of many conversations between the two, therefore, it is a very personal work. ________________________ Without a doubt, Murado is one of the Spanish painters with the greatest international projection. Proof of this are the numerous occasions on which he was awarded and the reach obtained by his works, many of them exhibited in important artistic spaces and galleries in Holland, Belgium, Australia, Portugal, Austria, New Zealand, Canada, South America or the United States. . Antonio José Murado López was born in 1964 in Lugo into a family of artists: his father was a painter and filmmaker, his mother a cartoonist, and his brother is a writer (Miguel Anxo Murado); Therefore, from a very young age, he developed his artistic interests. In 1985 he showed his first collective works and, just two years later, his first individual work, at the Sargadelos Gallery in Santiago de Compostela. He graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Salamanca in 1988. He obtained a scholarship to the Current Art Workshops of the Círculo de Bellas Artes of Madrid with the artist Juan Navarro Baldeweg. In 1987 he received the Manuel Colmeiro scholarship from the Xunta de Galicia, three years later the Banesto Scholarship and the Unión Fenosa Artistic Creation Scholarship in 1995. Thanks to his achievements, in 1996 he was able to move to New York and enter the Cooper Union School. Since then, he has lived and worked in New York, although before moving to the United States, he opened the Zú exhibition hall in Lugo in 1987, which for two years held exhibitions of young Spanish and Austrian artists in exchange with the Viennese gallery Cult. . The group that Murado forms together with the artists Thomas Jocher, Michael Haas and Antonio Fernández González also has the same name, Zú. Dimensions: 65 x 65 x 2 cm. Reference : 303531