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

AGUSTÍN ÚBEDA ROMERO (Herencia, Ciudad Real, 1925 - Madrid, 2007). "Bird that turns into gold". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower right corner and titled on the back. Measurements: 64 x 80 cm; 78 x 94 cm (frame). A large format work which presents us with a discordant world, where through a realistic language, the author constructs a fantasy.a 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 Alcázar 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 moved to Paris, thanks to a grant from the French Institute. After winning two consecutive prizes in the Certamen de Joven Pintura Francesa, 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 Molino de Oro at the XXI Exposición Manchega de 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 centre of art at that time. Professor Emeritus of the Complutense University of Madrid and Full Member of the Royal Academy of Doctors, Úbeda continued to receive important awards throughout his long career, especially the Grand Prize for Painting of the Círculo de Bellas Artes in 1980. Likewise, in 1998 the Centro Cultural de la Villa in Madrid exhibited a retrospective that covered his work between 1944 and 1998. That same year Úbeda held an anthological exhibition at the Caja de San Fernando in Seville comprising thirty-five paintings devoted to three of his constant themes: landscape, the female nude and the still life. Úbeda has held solo exhibitions in various Spanish cities, as well as in France, Switzerland and the United States. He is currently represented in the Museums of the City of Geneva and Paris, the Fine Arts Museum of Jaén, the Contemporary Art Museum of Badajoz, the Modern Art Museum of Valdepeñas, the Engraving Museum of Marbella, the Municipal Museum of Toledo, the National Museum of Contemporary Art, the Camón Aznar Museum of Zaragoza, the Provincial Museum of Ciudad Real and, in the United States, the museums of New Mexico, San Diego, Phoenix, Lowe of Miami and Evansille of Indiana.