Notes from a Workshop with Antonio Lopez Garcia

I’m pleased to post this wonderful article by Dean Fisher who writes about the experience he and his wife, Josephine Robinson had attending a workshop with Antonio Lopez Garcia in Spain over the past two summers. I would like to thank him and Josephine for providing this fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of a grand master teaching. Please also see the link below to Dean Fisher’s website and landscape painting workshop in France.

Email for the University of Navarra in Pamplona to ask to be on their Antonio Lopez Garcia workshop mailing list.; alumnosmuseo@unav.es The fee for the workshop is only 400 Euros. Dean states that he thinks Antonio offers these workshops for free and that the fees go to the University for the use of their facilities and to pay for the provided canvases and turps, etc. Don’t miss the video taken by Dean Fisher at the end of this article which shows Antonio working on a painting by the workshop student, Pablo Gimenez Olivarria, also with him speaking to Josephine and a brief video of him dancing to a beautiful vintage recording of Sevillana music with the program director.

A Workshop with Antonio Lopez Garcia

by Dean Fisher

Josephine Robinson and I attended the Antonio Lopez Garcia workshop in Pamplona, Spain this past June as well as in June of 2018. When I posted photos of this incredible opportunity and experience on social media, I was asked numerous times to share those aspects which I found meaningful about being with him during his workshops. The experience was also very special because two of our close artist friends; Alfonsina Betancourt and Frank Bruckmann were also there with us.

Here is a synopsis of a number of significant events and impressions I came away with, which I hope answer some of the questions I received from friends on Facebook and Instagram as well to provide the readers of Painting Perceptions an idea of what this profound experience was like.

The workshop consisted of painters from all over Spain as well as participants from Portugal, Australia, Israel, Italy, Romania, and Mexico (forgive me if I missed someone!) who were so warm and friendly and wonderful to work alongside with (and drink beer with and discuss all things art, etc. after hours!)

I’d like to start out by saying that writing about an artist and person of such magnitude is a daunting task for me. Antonio Lopez Garcia is not just a living master artist of the highest order but is also a profound, humble and generous human being.

Here’s an example of this; When the museum of Fine Arts in Boston mounted their Antonio Lopez Garcia retrospective back in 2008, Antonio gave a talk on the opening night of the exhibition. The auditorium was packed with people and there was a long-standing ovation when he entered. Antonio gently and humbly asked everyone to sit down and the first words to leave his mouth were; “All I have ever wanted to do is paint what is in my heart.” Needless to say, this was very emotional for many of us (I still get choked up!) it’s so rare to hear an artist of this stature speak about her or his art in such simple and human terms.

When I think about what a rare human he is in this star-studded, fast-paced world we live in, my brain is flooded with a wave of superlatives which when put together might sound like a child describing his favorite superhero.

In order to not embarrass myself and also to not go on for nine hours, I’ll try to keep this essay focused as much as possible on my impressions of being present at the workshop I attended last year and again this Spring in Pamplona, Spain.

My first moments with Antonio (as everyone calls him during the workshop) were powerful and really sum up his unique nature as a person and an artist.

We arrived at just before 10 am, my adrenaline was rushing as my eyes were darting all over the large classroom at the University of Navarra looking for Antonio. Exactly at 10 am he walked into the room and all 25 of the workshop participants froze with their vision fixed upon him. He had a huge, open, and friendly smile on his face as he entered the room as he said “buenas dias” in such a relaxed and genuine way. I followed him with my eyes as he walked through the room but someone started talking to me. 90 seconds later I turned and suddenly Antonio was standing right in front of me with his face very close to mine. This kind of physical closeness with someone whom you’re first meeting is quite common in Spain and elsewhere in the Mediterranean world but is quite different from what I’m used to in the US.

Not only was Antonio physically very close, he was also looking very directly and deeply into my eyes…it felt as if he was looking into my soul. His completely open, friendly and warm gaze was absolutely disarming and any anxiousness I felt melted away as he said “buenas dias, como estas?”

He went around the room greeting everyone in this fashion and soon we were all ready for this exhilarating five-day workshop to unfold.

I wanted to mention this initial greeting and his intense and very human gaze at the onset of this essay because I believe he has approached the subjects he has drawn, painted and sculpted throughout his long life as an artist in the same fashion. As many of you know, Antonio’s work, while being completely contemporary exudes a level of humanity that one rarely sees in today’s art world. It is the result of a deep love for his subjects and a very penetrating gaze over many hours, months and often years on a single work.

As we all prepared our materials to begin painting, Antionio went out to the market to buy objects for the numerous still lifes he wanted to set up. He returned with boxes of objects ranging from flowers, beautiful pumpkins and gourds to bloody cow femurs hermetically sealed in plastic.

So, aside from a live model to paint, there were about ten different still life setups around the room. Each set up had a unique Antonio flavor, nothing looking dated, trait or overly romantic and all were fascinating in a stark way….perhaps I was seeing everything through his eyes?

Each participant was free to paint either the same models all five days, (with a different model posing in the afternoon) or a still life all five days, or a mixture of these subjects, doing as many or few paintings as they wanted.

One would think that because Antonio’s work is so technically astounding, acute and sensitive he would ask everyone to employ his arduous system of measuring to the development of their work….this was not the case.

There was no prior discussion from Antonio about what his expectations were or any kind of methodology he wanted the participants to follow. Instead, he went around the room throughout the 5 days and discussed each person’s work on an individual basis as he saw it unfolding.

His main comments were not so much about drawing accuracy, but more about capturing the light, space, and sense of air around the forms in each person’s painting.

Antonio is surprisingly open-minded, he loves the work of Francis Bacon, saying “he invented such a personal language of painting” which he greatly admires. He finds artists like Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst very relevant to our time, as well as having a love for pure abstraction in painting. A number of his closest artist friends are abstract painters, Lucio Munoz comes to mind first.

The workshop was entirely unscripted or formal, instead, it all unfolded very organically which made it even more beautiful. There was a great balance between each artist working very hard on their paintings, to group conversations which would develop when he would begin talking to a participant about their painting. Sometimes 10-15 people would gather around just to listen to him speak about some aspect of art pertaining to what he was seeing, often there would be a group conversation with Antonio eagerly listening to each person speak and then respectfully responding, but always stating his firm convictions.

He speaks about art in the most passionate way, delivering his words slowly, thoughtfully, deliberately and with absolute conviction. I have never heard anyone speak about art so passionately and expressively and with such simple and direct language. There is never an ounce of arrogance or an air of a Master speaking down to his pupils. Instead, it’s artists exchanging ideas, as he says “The workshop is about artists getting together and painting and interacting about art, what could be more beautiful”

One of the most memorable events, during the workshop of 2018 was when ALG sat down with his enormous Taschen Velazquez book and began to discuss his love for Velazquez’s paintings. He told us that Velazquez was the one artist, who had been the most influential upon him and his paintings. Antonio, talked about the level of sensuousness in the work of Velazquez, along with that of other Spanish realist painters throughout history.

Antonio attributes this sensuousness, to the repressed social climate Spanish society has found itself in, throughout the centuries, due to the dominance of the Spanish Catholic Church, in the everyday life, of the Spanish people. The catholic church’s moral code led to very few, if any, depictions of nudity, and certainly, there are no depictions of overt sexuality. For Antonio, the fact that artists had to “curtail”, or disguise, or indeed use restraint when depicting, overt sexual themes/sensual scenes in their works, had the unintended consequence of making these artworks, in essence, more sensual and more physical in their depiction of reality. The sensuality, he felt, is evident, by the very fact that it is hidden, but as Antonio stated; “ it is there, as it bubbles, under the surface”.

Antonio felt that; the sense of denial and the sense of “disguise”, led to eroticism in these paintings. 
To show us an example, he opened the Taschen book, to the painting of “Christ Contemplated by the Christian Soul” ( Velazquez) which is in the National Gallery in London. He stated that this painting was, for him, one of the most sensuous paintings ever painted in the history of painting. He pointed to the arm of the standing angel on the right of the painting. He explained how the reserved gesture of the arm and hand, along with the most exquisite drawing and modeling of the form, was for him, as a painter, extremely sensuous, so much so, that it became erotic. Erotic, in it’s understated, and restrained manner.

Of course, the intensely emotional aspect of this experience was greatly heightened by Antonio expressing all of this in the most unbelievably passionate way which comes through in his choice of words, the cadence of his speech and his beautiful hand gestures. Every word seems to carry the weight of a long life spent completely dedicated to the development of the craft and depiction, in the most intense and complete way, what is most meaningful to him in this world.

Antonio went around to each participant throughout the day and discussed the paintings they were working on. He seemed very tuned in to each individual in a very intuitive way. He never attempted to mold their work to fit his vision. Instead, he commented about what he felt were both the strengths and weaknesses of the paintings. He would get excited when he felt things were being honestly depicted, even if the drawing was off the mark. Most of his comments were centered around capturing a sense of light and air around the model or still life objects.

Pertaining to my and Josephine’s paintings of the model
While our paintings were underway, on the second day Antonio said “Ella es mas Santa que tu” meaning “she is purer and more saintly than you (me)” I said, that is most definitely true! He said that Jo’s painting has a sense of being “of the air” as opposed to being solid and earthly. He compared Jo’s sensibility to that of his wife Maria, (speaking in the most loving way about Maria’s work). He loved how Jo’s painting had the feeling of being a religious icon and feeling very spiritual.

He liked my painting of the morning session model and told me he liked it from the very beginning. I asked him how he felt about me breaking up the paint so much and the cool patches of color I was interspersing throughout the forms. He told me liked it a lot and felt that it all was part of my painting language. He said the bare patches of canvas reminded him of Cezanne.

But it wasn’t all rosy! At one point he said, “I want to put my glasses on” I said “now I’m in trouble” he laughed heartily at that. He then began to dissect the drawing of the figure, saying he didn’t feel the painting was conveying the weight of the model well enough, saying she wasn’t firmly planted on the chair, mainly because the thighs didn’t convey compression. He then pointed out various places where he felt I was slightly elongating her which further led to this lack of a feeling of compression and convincing weight. Because of Antonio’s eagle eye, every comment was absolutely spot on!

Because there was a great sense of artists sharing their love of art, we wanted to show Antonio some of our favorite work. Jo and I asked him if he knew the work of Gwen John, he said no. We had a strong feeling that he would really love her paintings. Sure enough, we were right. He absolutely loved her work and expounded on its virtues for quite a while.

I also asked him if he knew Mondrian’s very early landscapes. He asked to see them. Well, he was floored by these two paintings, saying about the painting of the trees; “look at how he painted such a common subject, a grouping of trees which has been painted so many times throughout the history of art, but in such a completely personal and beautiful way”. He also loved the canal painting, really loving the sense of atmosphere and space.

Aside from Antonio going around the classroom all day and commenting on all twenty-six participant’s work while it was in progress, he also sat down with each painter and a portfolio of their work and made comments about what he felt were the strengths and weaknesses in each person’s efforts.

One of the great highlights of the 2018 workshop which we attended was Antonio’s very positive response to Josephine’s paintings, needless to say, this was extremely meaningful for her. Antonio absolutely loved her work, expounding on its originality, inventiveness, and clarity of vision. A beautiful analogy which he used was “Josephine is like a honey bee who goes out and collects pollen all day and then comes back to the hive to create her own honey” He once again compared her work to that of his wife Maria’s work saying “its lightness and airiness gives the work a spiritual quality which his work doesn’t have because his work is about the earth and this work is about air”

Antonio also liked my work quite a bit. He said “you are a realist, a veteran painter and you handle paint with great ease. He liked the light in my work as well. Because he sensed that my focus as a painter is “reality” an attempt at an acute depiction of light and space, he suggested that I search for an even greater range of tonal and color changes as I observe my subjects (of course this is one of the great virtues in Antonio’s work, his ability see and render 10,000 nuances of tone and color). An analogy that he used was “An excellent journalist goes into a room with 75 people and very quickly studies and sums up everyone there and writes a very comprehensive story. A lesser journalist only evaluates half the people in the room and the story is therefore lacking.

He felt this still life of mine was my best painting. He felt it was the most contemporary and interesting of all the work which I showed him.

He liked the freshness and directness of this figure painting. I asked him if the unfinished parts of it bothered him and he said no, that it felt like a complete statement. He said that a painting doesn’t have to be “finished from edge to edge to express something and be a full statement”

When I told him that I feel the need to see energetic mark-making in my work, a kind of fast brushstroke, his response was so intelligent and simple “The hand can be fast as long as the eye is slow”. Words of a Zen Master!

During the past few years, Antonio has been painting some gorgeous, small paintings of flowers. Because they’re painted from life in a minimal number of sessions over a short time, I asked him if he is also measuring the flower arrangements, as he measured everything else he paints. He said “Yes, of course, measuring is my ticket into the metro” I just loved that expressive analogy!

A few questions put to ALG:

Q: What is the single most important motivating idea which brings you back to the studio each day.
A: “I’m not yet as good as Phidias, so it’s time to get to work!” (the great Greek sculptor 480BC-430 BC)

Q: What kind of brushes do you use?
A: only rounds of all sizes and mostly martel, which is sable.

Q: Do you use any kind of medium or additives with your paint?
A: No, nothing at all, just some turpentine. When you use a good quality paint, you don’t have to use anything else with it.

Q: Do you paint with lead white or Cremnitz white”
A: No, mostly titanium white and sometimes zinc white

Q: Do you get tired after teaching 26 students for 8 hours a day over 5 days?
A: “No, when you have something to say, you don’t get tired”

Antonio’s energy level never seemed to wane over the five days of the course which is truly impressive considering that all day long he was bombarded with questions from all the participants as well as numerous people dropping in for a photo op and chat with him when they learned that he was in town. Amazing when one considers that he is 84 years old this year!

This was the first year that there were a couple of translators present during the workshop for non-Spanish speakers which was great because Antonio only speaks Spanish throughout the workshop.

I encourage anyone who loves the work of Antonio Lopez Garcia to apply for this workshop. He is a unique human and legend in our time. This experience will be a powerful and transformative experience in the life of any artist.

Videos of Antonio working on a painting by the workshop student, Pablo Gimenez Olivarria, also with him speaking to Josephine and a brief video of him dancing to a beautiful vintage recording of Sevillana music with the program director.

Email of the University of Navarra in Pamplona to get on their ALG workshop mailing list.; alumnosmuseo@unav.es

Link to Dean Fisher’s website and information about his workshop in France.