The balance between silence and reality in the art of Antonio López García. The interview

Tell us what you do and your beginnings.

I like my work very much, I feel a great vocation, not only for my work but also for the world of painting, sculpture, music… All this has made me a better person.

For those of us who started out in painting, our dream is to be able to make a living from it. Sometimes that comes early, sometimes late, and sometimes it never comes at all. I have been very lucky because I started very early and, from time to time, I earned some money.

When I got married, at the age of 25, I was already living from painting: living from your work is a dream that sometimes comes true.

When you start, it is inevitable to have influences, no one is free from them. In your formative years, you get to know the things that have happened in the art world. I had no idea because I was a boy from Tomelloso (Ciudad Real) and my uncle did not talk much about art because, although he had studied painting in his youth, he was secluded in the village working in a very isolated way.

So, little by little, I discovered all the modern art, like Pablo Picasso, and I got to know things that I didn’t think could exist. Some of them excited me and had a great impact on me. I was influenced by Cubism, Picasso, Paul Klee, and Henry Moore, a very complex mixture because, on the other hand, I was also very influenced by the Greeks and the Egyptians.

That’s how it all happened… At a certain age, you begin to understand reality and you start to abandon it, you start to move away from all that contamination of influences. But it takes a while to get there. I already had created my own world in the ’60s (I can see it now).

What does your work aim to say?

In my art, I look for the truth. But I think this does not only happen to me: Spanish art, in general terms, is an art of observation. It is the noble material of the starting point. What is interesting is happening close to you, and you just have to know how to look at it. That is very present in Diego Velázquez’s painting.

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