Medal - 2005 TFP Award; Luis Feito

Luis Feito (Madrid 1929 - Rascafria 2021). An acclaimed painter and graphic artist, in addition to possessing the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts and being a permanent member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, he undoubtedly continues to be one of the key figures on the current Spanish art scene, as has been made patently obvious by the awards he has received from the ARCO Contemporary Art Fair, the Estampa Graphic Works Salon and the Osaka Art Fair.
Feito began his cohesive and well-defined creative career with a brief figurative period that ended when, through a cubist encounter, he was drawn in by abstraction at the beginning of the fifties. A man of inquiring mind and strong temperament, he received a scholarship from the French government in 1956 and went to live in Paris where he immersed himself fully in the receptive and stimulating cultural ambiance of the time. He nonetheless kept actively in touch with the Spanish art scene.
During his stay in France he came under the influence of automatism and of matter painting which led him to working with oil pastel and sand, and with a reduced palette of blacks, whites and ochres. A short time later while still in Paris he became a founding member of the El Paso group along with Millares, Saura, Rivera, Canogar and others. This artistic movement brought together creators and critics whose aim was to "vitalize" modern art in the Spain of the "development plan" by following an informalist line of expression that nonetheless admitted a certain plurality of standpoint. At the beginning of the sixties Feito added a fourth color to his palette, a red, that he used in predominantly circular structures and subjects, and these gradually gave way in the seventies to geometricization and a plenitude of color. In the later years of the decade a refined stage of white squares manifested itself. In 1981 Luis Feito left Paris and moved to Montreal until 1983, the year in which he set up residence in New York. He currently lives in Madrid.
Luis Feito was designated Commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters of France. In addition to exhibiting his work in the most important museums and collections in the world, he has received several awards, the most important being the following: the Award from the Alexandria Biennial of Mediterranean Art, (1955 and 1956); the U.M.A.M. Award from the 1st Paris Biennial in 1959; the David Bright Award at the 30th Venice Biennale, 1960, and the Culture Award from the Madrid Community in 1998. The Real Casa de la Moneda Foundation bestowed its Tomás Francisco Prieto Award on him in 2005.