After graduating in journalism in 1957, Arroyo moved to Paris with the idea of writing, but soon painting would win out over his literary vocation, though it would always remain central to his artistic practice. His caustic and sarcastic figurative painting puts him in the orbit of , further reinforced by his use of bright colours and flat brushwork with an almost complete lack of depth. His critical stance against dictatorships led him to ridicule and reinterpret Spanish clichés, which made him a target for persecution by Franco’s regime. Though he returned to Spain after Franco’s death, his work did not receive the official recognition it deserved until 1982, the year he was awarded the National Visual Arts Prize.

His experience as a political refugee (1973-75) was behind the series he dedicated to people suffering repression and exile, including a series of tribute paintings to dead poets, as in the case of Federico García Lorca, of which there is an example in the BBVA Collection. Also worth underscoring in his painting output is the highly theatrical compositional approach, something clearly on view in Toute la ville en parle and La Nuit espagnole. At the end of the sixties and early seventies he started working in the theatre thanks to a commission from the stage director Klaus Michael Grüber. The passion this new discipline awoke in him encouraged Arroyo to repeat the experience on many further occasions, and even to write a stage play.

Toute la ville en parle is one of the most representative series in Arroyo’s oeuvre. Made in the 1980s, Arroyo takes his reference from the film The Whole Town’s Talking (1935) by the American director John Ford. This is a good example of how Arroyo used film noir and night-time urban iconography to develop his unique personal world. The artist illuminates the crime scene with masterful effectiveness, a scene including both living and inanimate witnesses —hiding in the shadows or on display under the blinding light of the shop window— as well as the escaping murderer.

As a modern artist, Arroyo pays tribute to the urban cityscape, the setting par excellence for modernism, amplifying the legend of an empty, night-time city. As if it were a film still, the work takes place under the light of streetlamps or of shop windows, the shadows they project on the scene or the elements peopling it. For this work in the BBVA Collection, Arroyo created a preparatory drawing in 1983, in which the only difference is the number of hats on display in the shop window. He also made a series of silkscreen prints showing the various elements of this night-time world.

From a painterly viewpoint, the works in this series, with their increasing complexity and greater refinement, are compositions with a simple, nearly geometric structure. Also worth pointing out is the carefully studied scene, speaking to Arroyo’s experience as a stage designer. In these “stage sets” he inserts synthetically outlined figures that combine iconic efficiency with underlying nuances of colour and texture.