Antonio Saura Abstract Prints

"Untitled" by Antonio Saura is an abstract collage-style screen print that looks like bits of art paper, writings, drawings, scribbles that together have an overall abstract design quality that fit together like a chaotic surrealist puzzle. Saura claimed Hans Arp and Yves Tanguy as his artistic influences. Antonio Saura was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-world war II painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is often remembered. An outspoken critic of Franco’s dictatorship, Spanish painter Antonio Saura is best known for his gestural, calligraphic paintings that pay homage to Spain’s cultural heritage. His paintings often employ the dark color palette of some of the country’s most celebrated painters, such as Pablo Picasso, Francisco de Goya, and Diego Velázquez, and pay tribute to their work in his choice of titles. A self-taught artist, Saura began making art at the age of seventeen, producing dreamlike landscapes in the style of Surrealism. Ten years later, in 1957, he co-founded the El Paso Group, a collective of painters, sculptors, and art critics who sought to revive Spanish art production in the wake of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. At the end of his career, Saura temporarily set aside painting to collaborate with his brother, the film director Carlos Saura...