Antonio López García

Antonio López García
Two Backs (Male-Female), pencil on paper, 38cm x 54cm, 1964 by Antonio López García
Born	(1936-01-06) 6 January 1936 (age 81) Tomelloso, Ciudad Real
Nationality	Spanish
Known for	Painting, Sculpture

Antonio López García (born 6 January 1936) is a Spanish painter and sculptor, known for his realistic style. He is criticized by some art critics for his neo-academism, but praised by others, such as Robert Hughes, who consider him a master realist. His style sometimes is deemed hyperrealistic. His painting was the subject of the film El Sol del Membrillo, by Victor Erice, in 1992.

López García was born on 6 January 1936 in Tomelloso, Ciudad Real, a few months before the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. It first appeared that Antonio would continue in the family tradition as a farmer, but an early facility for drawing caught the attention of his uncle Antonio Lopez Torres, a local painter of landscapes, who gave him his first lessons. In 1949 he moved to Madrid in order to study for entrance to the competitive Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Between 1950 and 1955 he studied art at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, winning a number of prizes. While at the school he developed a friendship with Maria Moreno—also a painter—whom he would marry in 1961. He also formed friendships with Francisco Lopez Hernandez, Amalia Avia, and Isabel Quintanilla. Out of this nucleus a realist group, the New Spanish Realists, was formed in Madrid. López Garcia became friends with Jack Chambers, a Canadian studying in Madrid. Although Chambers did not belong to the New Spanish Realists, parallels to their style can be found in his work created in Canada in the late 1960s.

Madrid of the postwar period was isolated from the international panorama of art and culture. All the information that López García accessed on contemporary art was derived from library books at the school; he gradually became aware of Picasso and other great artists of the period.