AGUSTÍN ÚBEDA ROMERO (Herencia, Ciudad Real, 1925 - Madrid, 2007).

AGUSTÍN ÚBEDA ROMERO (Herencia, Ciudad Real, 1925 - Madrid, 2007). "Astro". Acrylic on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner, titled and signed on the back. Measurements: 53 x 64 cm; 67,5 x 78,5 cm (frame). Great surrealist painter, framed within the so-called Spanish School of Paris, Agustín Úbeda was a great connoisseur of the History of Art and a man of wide culture. He entered the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1944, where he was a disciple of Vázquez Díaz, Eugenio Hermoso and Joaquín Valverde, receiving the title of professor of drawing in 1948. He made his individual debut in 1949 at the Casino of Alcazar de San Juan, and in 1952, at the age of twenty-seven, he held his first personal exhibition in Madrid, which took place at the Xagra gallery. The following year he settled in Paris, thanks to a scholarship from the French Institute. After winning two consecutive prizes in the Young French Painting Contest, a second prize in 1956 and a first prize the following year, the doors of the prestigious Drouant-David gallery in Paris were opened to him, where he regularly exhibited his work from then on. In 1960 he received the Gold Mill of the XXI Manchegan Exhibition of Valdepeñas, and three years later he was awarded the bronze medal at the V Biennial of Alexandria. It was shortly before he made the leap, from the Biosca Gallery in Madrid, to the United States, the world center of art at that time. Professor Emeritus of the Complutense University of Madrid and Full Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors, Ubeda continued to receive important awards throughout his long career, especially highlighting the Grand Prize for Painting of the Circle of Fine Arts in 1980. Likewise, in 1998 the Centro Cultural de la Villa de Madrid exhibited a retrospective that covered his work between 1944 and 1998. That same year Úbeda held an anthological exhibition of thirty-five paintings at the Caja de San Fernando in Seville, dedicated to three of his constant themes: the landscape, the female nude and the still life. Úbeda has held individual exhibitions in several Spanish cities, as well as in France, Switzerland and the United States. He is currently represented in the Museums of the Villa in Geneva and Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts in Jaén, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Badajoz, the Museum of Modern Art in Valdepeñas, the Museum of Engraving in Marbella, the Municipal Museum in Toledo, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Camón Aznar Museum in Zaragoza, the Provincial Museum in Ciudad Real and, in the United States, the Museums of New Mexico, San Diego, Phoenix, Lowe in Miami and Evansille in Indiana.