BIOGRAFÍAEXPOSICIONESGERENCIACONTACTOTESTIMONIOSACTIVIDADES ÓLEOGRABADODIBUJOOTROS

Biografía   3/5   In Xauen, 1946, at twenty-five   Eufemiano returned to Spain in 1962 to settle in Madrid, where the artistic and cultural scene was certainly more modest than in the Argentine capital city. Even so, he did not succeed in transferring immediately to Spain the high recognition that his work was already enjoying in Buenos Aires. His painting, though it surprised and inspired high respect, did not “fit in” with a narrow-minded conformism which opposed reductively and thoughtlessly “figurative art” – almost contemptuously associated with the past – to “abstract art” – submissively identified as the only chance for the future.  Those who ruled the Spanish pictorial scene did not posses yet the necessary conceptual resources to understand that a “classical” formal language could serve as a vehicle for compositional proposals of the utmost modernity. Thus, Eufemiano had to start again almost from the beginning his quest for socio-professional recognition.  Obviously, as a painter, he was far from being a beginner and decided to stay on the chosen path; in doing so, he refused to make easy compromises and showed a remarkable self-confidence. This “emigration to his own native land” (a true cultural emigration, the entry into a completely new territory, although in name he was Spanish) took him as long as the Argentine crossing; namely, eleven years. In effect, it was not until 1973 that he began to obtain again a significant level of recognition, which materialized both in important exhibitions (in the rooms of the National Library in Madrid, and subsequently in prestigious private art galleries), and in his being selected to represent Spain at some international biennial exhibitions (Empoli, 1973; São Paulo, 1975). What had happened inside and outside Eufemiano to make such a leap possible?               Versión española   3/5

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