Artist Biography
Antonio Guanse, born January 1, 1926 in Tortosa (Spain) and died November 22, 2008 in Paris 10th, is a Spanish painter and lithographer.
Antonio Guansé's father, born in Tortosa in 1926, was a civil servant. Antonio completed his secondary studies in Barcelona, where he then entered the Escuela superior de bellas artes San Jorge. He wrote poems at a very young age and his taste for poetry would never leave him: he would later illustrate bibliophile editions of Paul Éluard and Jean Breton.
Painting portraits and landscapes of Cerdanya from 1945, Antonio Guanse was a member of the ciclos experimentales de arte nuevo from 1948 to 1951, in the company of Antoni Tàpies, Josep Guinovart (es), Jose Picó and José Subirà-Puig4, attended the French Institute in Barcelona and made trips to Ibiza in the Balearic Islands where he painted the world of fishermen and peasants. He was interested in Romanesque art, Zurbaran, Rembrandt, Goya and Isidre Nonell. His first solo exhibition was held in Barcelona in 1950.
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In 1953, he arrived in Paris thanks to a scholarship from the French State6, discovered Van Gogh and Picasso there and settled there permanently in 1954, initially in a studio located opposite the Bateau-Lavoir (he would later move to 68, avenue d'Italie). He travelled and painted in Holland, Germany and Scotland.
Raymond Suillerot organized his first solo exhibition in Paris in 1955. Antonio Guansé, who would henceforth be a permanent artist at his gallery, then produced his first lithographs and engravings. It was in 1959 that he sought a new visual language that was similar to what would later be called New Figuration.
From 1965 onwards, the presence of man in his paintings became essential. His painting demonstrated a strong advance towards simplification, the stripping down of forms, the need to go or return to the essential, allowing Gérard Xuriguera to situate Antonio Guansé with Francis Bacon, John Christoforou, Maurice Rocher, Bengt Lindström, Francis Salles, Maryan S. Maryan, Marcel Pouget and Louis le Brocquy among the artists who, having recognised themselves in this expressionist family to whom "the suggested forms and gestural fever of this disfigured figuration suit", saw with surprise their works become the object of another gaze, of an interest which, however, was initially less an adhesion than a reflex of curiosity8. His first sculptures, ceramics and wall decorations date from 1971.
Died in November 2008, Antonio Guansé rests in the La Villette cemetery.
