Carlos Andrés López del Rey – Carloandrés
Born in Sada into a family with Valencian roots, his interest in painting and his commitment to teaching took him across much of Spain before he eventually settled in Eivissa, where he gave so much of himself. This year, the city will dedicate two major retrospectives to him on the occasion of his centenary, because his work goes far beyond landscape and portraiture: it represents a vision of Ibiza and its people in the 20th century, a journey through the Spanish landscape, and a distinctive absorption and interpretation of the techniques and pictorial approaches found throughout the history of our art.
Carlos Andrés López del Rey – Carloandrés – (Sada – A Coruña, 1926 – Eivissa, 2018), a Valencian artist who made his home in Eivissa, was a tireless advocate of art for art’s sake. He defended figuration and realism without renouncing the technical and formal discoveries of the abstraction of his time, which he incorporated into his own vision of painting. His concept was that of total painting, encompassing all its forms and manifestations. The predominance of form over subject matter: what is fundamental in a painting is the combination of composition, colour, drawing, aesthetics, and even technique; not the subject, what is represented, which is ultimately incidental. His legacy lies in his originality and mastery.
Only those closest to him knew the many personalities that coexisted within him: the upright and serious teacher – somewhat shy, perhaps –; the tireless walker carrying his easel, paint box and canvas as he wandered through streets and countryside; the almost monk-like figure shut away in his studio, working year after year on a single canvas; the seeker of absolute perfection in a work, even while aware that, as he himself used to say, perfection does not belong to this world. For him, Art stood above everything, above politics and even above religion.
He always kept his distance from parties, social circles, bars and events. The only social occasions he never missed were the openings of exhibitions by all the island’s painters, for whom he always had a kind word. He could always perceive something beautiful or worthy of appreciation in the work of others. He was an omnivorous devourer of painting in galleries and museums.
He was drawn to religious mysticism, poetry and solitude. Frequently withdrawn into himself and his art, he felt most at ease expressing himself through poetry and the brush.
His extraordinarily long studio sessions were daunting for those who sat for him. On one occasion, a young girl ended up crying out of desperation; on another, he had to ask that the sitter’s clothes be left on a mannequin because they could no longer endure the sitting. This is why the person portrayed so often appears captured within the oil painting itself.
His circle of friends was filled with painters and poets, in a necessarily incomplete list: the painters Miquel Villà, Luís Arcas, Ricardo Llorens, Hernández Mompó, Arseni Pellicer, Beppo and Pomar; and the poets Paco Brines, Ricardo Defarges, Julia Uceda, Jean Serra and Isidor Macabich. To enumerate his students would go beyond the possibilities of this article.
Carloandrés spent part of his childhood moving from one place to another, eventually settling in Valencia, where his father, a member of the Carabineros, served during the war. There he undertook his first studies in Arts and Crafts and worked in the religious-imagery workshop of Rausell and Llorens. He subsequently moved to the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, and completed his Fine Arts degree at the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia. It was there that he held his first exhibition, at Sala Mateu, in 1948.
He travelled across half of Spain painting. After winning the first competitive examination for a painting position organised by the Caja de Ahorros de Valencia in 1949, he was able to travel throughout Spain in search of subjects, experiences and knowledge. He trained in Madrid – where he worked as a copyist at the Prado Museum – and Valencia; painted in Seville; taught drawing in Lalín (Pontevedra); worked as a painter and teacher in Eivissa – where he settled for sixty years –; and painted in Pobla de Segur (Lleida), Morella (Castelló), Jaca (Huesca) and Castro Urdiales (Cantabria).
He worked in Indian ink, sanguine, gouache, watercolour, pencil, encaustic and, of course, oil painting. Sometimes working with them individually, sometimes combining them. He also produced prints on various materials and using different techniques. Of all these, his favourites would always be gouache, drawing from life, and oil painting. As for oil, he used it both on canvas and wood, as well as diluted on paper. One of his most characteristic techniques involved using fire to burn the paint on the canvas. Once heated, he could work it with a palette knife and shape it; after it cooled, he would paint over it again, creating several interwoven layers of material. In this way he achieved his highly personal interpretation of walls, sometimes scarred and bearing centuries of superimposed layers of limewash, and of the rock formations that characterise an important part of his production. His working process was slow and meticulous; sometimes he would return to the same painting over the course of several years. Until a work had left his studio, it remained liable to be altered because of his fierce, self-critical dissatisfaction. He always believed that a work could be improved.
Here we offer a glimpse of what he achieved, what he attempted, what he sought, and what he may perhaps have found, over more than seventy years of painting.
For further information:
https://fundaciocarloandres.org/pintors/carloandres-vid-lopez-del-rey-carloandres
https://carloandres.org — featuring the beginnings of the catalogue raisonné and studies on the painter.
