Gina

Antonio Saura

1958–59

In the late 1950s Antonio Saura, along with Manolo Millares, Manuel Rivera, and others, founded the Spanish group El Paso (The Step). Dedicated to the revitalization of Spanish art, its members, many of whom traveled internationally, brought Abstract Expressionist and "art informel" practices to Spain. A short-lived association of artists (it was established in 1957 and disbanded in 1960), El Paso strove to incorporate international modernist practices of abstraction with expressionism, whose long lineage in Spain includes Picasso, Velázquez, and El Greco. Saura often used the techniques of gestural abstraction—vigorous brushwork, an untutored, childlike approach, and brash or even ugly color schemes—to portray human figures and classical religious themes, as in his collage "Crucifixion" (WU 2005.0007). "Gina" belongs to Saura’s Women series, many works of which evoke famous actresses such as Brigitte Bardot or, as in this case, Gina Lollobrigida, and use aggressive brushwork to render the female sex symbol as a fearsome semiabstract monster. In an era when many (male) artists were particularly interested in aligning the act of artistic creation with primitive instincts and primal drives, the female form (seen as both alluring and dangerous) was often imbued with such ambivalent associations. [Exhibition label, 2015]

Artist Antonio Saura (Spanish, 1930–1988)
Title Gina
Date 1958–59
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions unframed | 64 1/16 x 54 3/8 in.
Credit line Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, 1963
Object number WU 4066

Technique oil painting
Work type painting

The Body in Pieces
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 02/16/2024 - 04/15/2024

From Picasso to Fontana: Collecting Modern and Postwar Art in the Eisendrath Years, 1960–1968
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 01/23/2015 - 04/19/2015

Modernism at Midstream: From Europe to America and Back Again
Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University in St. Louis, 09/04/1983 - 11/06/1983

1963
Mr. and Mrs. Richard K. Weil, St. Louis

Inscription Recto, upper left, inscribed into paint layer: SAURA 59

Inscription Verso, upper left on top stretcher bar, in pencil: GINA

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