LUIS FEITO Spanish painter (Madrid 1929).

He attended the art school in Madrid where, in 1954, he became professor of drawing and held his first solo exhibition (Bucholz gallery), the second being in 1955 (Fernando Re gallery). Having received a grant he came to Paris in 1954 and the following year exhibited at the Galerie Arnaud which has exhibited his works regularly. In his early paintings graphism plays a major part, using clear lines against darker backgrounds drawing sorts of plans that evoke architecture or gardens. However, Feito very quickly discovered the material to which he would be faithful for many years, the thick grainy impasto, evoking the charred land of his country; it is again ribbed, incised with thin graphics, with lines that intersect, but which would disappear little by little to be replaced by light in contrasts emphasized by bright and dark areas. Gradually, “natural” colours disappeared to leave place almost only to red and black. From 1964-1965, colour dominated (Diptyque n° 563, 1966, Marseille, Musée Cantini), especially in the large canvases shown at the Venice Biennale in 1968: thick masses of bright colours are organized in simple rhythms with a sort of elementary force and often contrast with vast unified areas in diptychs that have a monumental character (exhibited at the galerie Arnaud, 1968). The Madrid M.E.A.C. devoted a retrospective to Feito in 1988. His works  of the 1980s confirm his interest in the geometric clarity of large coloured strokes. He was made Officier des arts et des Lettres of France in 1985. His works  can be found in the museums of Bilbao, Cuenca, Madrid (Juan March collection), Marseille, Alexandria, Rome, Montréal, New York (Guggenheim Museum), Houston, Rio de Janeiro, and Paris (Musée national d’art moderne and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris).

Extract from the Larousse « Dictionnaire de la peinture »