LUIS GORDILLO
Sevilla, (Spain)1934

After studying law and fine art, leaving the latter unfinished, in 1958 he travelled to Paris, where he took an interest in the work of Wols, Dubuffet and Fautrier and produced his first works, Informalist in style, with an influence of automatism. In 1962 he moved to London, and on his return to Spain he settled in Madrid. At that point his style was evolving towards narration, influenced by Por Art and geometrical standardisation. In the years leading up to 1968 he produced various series, including Cabezas (Heads), 1963-66, and Automovilistas (Automobilists), 1968, which were presented at the Galería Edurne in Madrid (1964, 1966 and 1968). In those series he took images of no special significance from advertisements and comics and subjected them to a geometrical arrangement that disintegrated and restructured them. In 1969 he experienced a crisis that led him to give up painting for two years and devote himself exclusively to making automatic drawings, which he exhibited at the Galería Juana de Aizpuru in Seville in 1971. The beginning of the decade coincided with his discovery of photography, which he used to experiment with methods of reproduction and transformation, and with a return to painting, characterised by the use of acrylic in strong, artificial colours, figures subjected to grotesque distortion, the idea of the double and multiplication, as in Andarín cabezón dúplex (Duplex Head Walker), 1975-76, and spaces of psychological origin containing an element of irony. He maintained this style throughout the decade. In 1977 he had a selective exhibition at the National Library. In the late seventies he evolved towards greater abstraction, as can be seen in Payseyes, 1979, based on greater use of serial production and ambiguity between figuration and abstraction. During the eighties he continued this exploration, using the idea of an embryo going through a process of germinative evolution in series such as Gruyère, 1983-84, and Situaciones meándricas (Meandering Situations), 1986-87, created from networks of tubes that suggested organic tissues. In the eighties his work was presented at Fernando Vijande (1981, 1985), the Galería Soledad Lorenzo (1987) and the Torre de los Guzmanes in Seville (1989). Around 1989 he made a series of polyptychs in which he played with the relationship of belonging or independence of each picture, a procedure that he developed further in the nineties, when he continued to produce superimposed biomorphic shapes, geometrical fragments and real pictures in a state of tension, as in Anticosas (Anti-things), 1995-97, while his work was presented at the principal museums in the country (IVAM in 1994 and MACBA in 1999).