Antonio Saura Atarés (September 22, 1930 – July 22, 1998) was a Spanish artist and writer, one of the major post-war painters to emerge in Spain in the fifties whose work has marked several generations of artists and whose critical voice is often remembered.
In 1971 he temporarily abandoned painting on canvas to devote himself to writing, drawing and painting on paper. In 1977, Rolf Lauter and Antonio Saura met for the first time in the Rodolphe Stadler gallery Paris and started a dialogue and a long-standing friendship. In 1979, the collaboration gave rise to the first major retrospective at the Galerie de Margarete Lauter Mannheim with more than 50 images and drawings, followed by many other presentations. In 1989 Lauter – then Chief Curator of the Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt – has been co-organizer with Katharina Winnekes of the Frankfurt exhibition The Abused Man with works by Saura, Millares and Canogar. In 1977 Saura began publishing his writings, and he created several stage designs for the theatre, ballet and opera, thanks to the collaboration with his brother, the film director Carlos Saura. From 1983 to his death in 1998, he revisited all of his themes and figures.
