Eduardo Úrculo Fernández

Eduardo Úrculo Fernández - The Bridge of the Sword II

Artist Biography: Eduardo Úrculo Santurce (Vizcaya), 1938 - Madrid, 2003 When he was a child his family moved to Asturias, where he began to paint without any previous artistic training. In 1957 he published his first illustrated strips in the Oviedo newspaper La Nueva España. Shortly afterwards he moved to Madrid and began taking classes at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. In the capital he worked illustrating stories for the magazine Triunfo, designing theatrical scenery and painting suburbs and shantytowns with an expressionist social content. He went to Paris in 1959, to the Grande Chaumière Academy, where two years later he began working as a graphic designer for the Moro Studio. The city of light gave him the opportunity to meet Eduardo Westerdahl, whose influence made his painting turn towards abstraction, although four years later he would return to a figuration with a strong content of social criticism. Other illustrious figures he dealt with were Man Ray, Max Ernst and Giacometti. His first contact with American Pop came during a trip to Northern Europe in 1967, resulting in a Pop style marked by a realism based on a very vivid coloring and, well into the 70's, by his erotic, satirical and critical themes. He lived in New York in the 1980s, where he worked with Mario Vanarelli on the sets for the Colon Opera. Back in Paris in 1992, he created a space for the Cartier firm using his bronze sculptures of suitcases and golf clubs. Meanwhile, for the Festival de Teatro Clásico de Mérida, he created the poster and set design for Aeschylus' The Seven Against Thebes. Suitcases, hats and nudes in the style of 17th and 18th century Japanese illustrations were always his main themes. In his last stage he added the Theme of the traveler confronted with the great modern cities, an ironic variant of the figure of the romantic nomad overwhelmed by the natural landscapes. When he died, he was immersed in his particular rediscovery of cubism in still lifes in which he resorted to his usual themes and iconographies. Technically, he focused on the treatment of color, volumes and geometric games. This evolution in his career could be seen through the numerous solo exhibitions he held around the world since his arrival in Paris in 1959, up to the anthological exhibitions of his pictorial and sculptural facet at the Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid in 1997, and the one of his graphic work in 2000 at the Museum of Contemporary Spanish Print in Marbella. Just when she died suddenly at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, an anthological exhibition of her work organized by SEACEX was touring several countries. His works hang on the walls of the most important museums and collections of modern art in the world such as the Reina Sofia or the Juan March Foundation, among many others.