Antonio Rodríguez Luna

(Montoro, Cordoba, 1910 – 1985)

Author's artworks

20th Century Spanish

Rodríguez Luna was born and died in Andalusia. Of humble origins, he began his training in Seville, at the workshop of Juan Lafita (1889-1967), where he painted ceramics. In 1927 he moved to Madrid, where he enrolled at the San Fernando Academy of Art. There, he attended classes imparted by Julio Romero de Torres (1874-1930) and entered the studio of Timoteo Pérez Rubio (1896-1977) as an apprentice.

His republican ideas encouraged him to sign the La tierra manifesto (1923) and to engage with circles of avant-garde artists—first working with surrealist principles, and later, after the 1934 Asturias Revolution, adopting a more realist aesthetic imbued with social and revolutionary undertones. This led him to create, for the Republican side, Dieciséis dibujos de Guerra (Sixteen War Drawings), a portfolio he presented in 1937 at the Paris International Exposition.

The artist, a militant communist, was a member of “Pilgrim Spain”, namely, the generation estranged by the Civil War, who found exile in Mexico thanks to the policy of asylum put in place by President Cárdenas. A Guggenheim scholarship enabled him to live and exhibit his work in New York. Upon returning to Mexico, Rodríguez Luna was appointed a teacher at the National School of Visual Arts. In the following decades his painting evolved towards Expressionism and Informalismo. He was also interested in animal subjects, particularly bulls, so closely associated with his home country, but also in still lifes and interior scenes, which he addressed with utmost refinement and lyricism.

Rodríguez Luna combined his vocation as a painter with his activity as an illustrator, first in anti-Franco journals (Octubre, by Rafael Alberti, Mono azul), and later, once based in Mexico, for books published by compatriots like Max Aub, León Felipe or Pedro Garfias.

He exhibited intermittently at Galería de Arte Mexicano, Museo de Arte Moderno (1959, 1974, 1980) and Palacio de Bellas Artes (1984). During his lifetime, he accrued widespread recognition which later declined due to changing tastes and the ups and downs of the art market.