Eduardo Arroyo Rodríguez (Madrid, February 26, 1937-ibid, October 14, 2018) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and engraver in a figurative style, key to narrative figuration as well as Spanish Neoplasticism (or new figuration) and linked to popart.
Arroyo was born in Madrid, of Leonese roots.
He combined writing with painting, but by 1960 he was living off his work as a painter.
Arroyo exhibited in a group exhibition in Paris already in 1960 (“Salón de la Joven Pintura”), but his first public impact occurred three years later, when he presented at the III Paris Biennial of the polyptych The Four Dictators, a series of effigies of dictators, which provoked protests from the Spanish government.
In July 1964 she participated in the exhibition Daily Mythologies, founder of the narrative figuration movement at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris with Bernard Rancillac, Hervé Télémaque, Peter Klasen, Antonio Recalcati, Jacques Monory, Leonardo Cremonini, Jan Voss and Öyvind Fahlström and the following year in the eponymous exhibition Narrative Figuration in Contemporary Art, where he presented with Gilles Aillaud and Recalcati the polyptych Live and Let Die or the Tragic End of Marcel Duchamp, today preserved in the Reina Sofía Museum, which constitutes the manifesto of this movement.
Arroyo's figurative option took a while to be accepted in Paris.
Characteristics of many of his works are the general absence of spatial depth and the flattening of perspective.
Arroyo rejected the unconditional devotion to some avant-garde artists (Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró), which he considered imposed by fashion.
Arroyo ridicules and “reinterprets” Spanish clichés with surreal touches.
His activity as a set designer began with the filmmaker Klaus Grüber and had one of his milestones in 1982, with Life is a Dream by Calderón de la Barca, under the direction of José Luis Gómez.
In 2000, the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports awarded him the Gold Medal for merit in Fine Arts.
The artist died on October 14, 2018 in Madrid.
selected works
