La nuit des forains, 2023

Antonio Almodovar  

Born in 1976 in Andujar, Andalusia, Spain.

Born in a working class, violent, particularly disadvantaged environment, from which the Culture was reduced to the calendars of the P.T.T. Childhood, adolescence without any sensitization to the art, no interest for the drawing, the music... Daily physical and psychological violence. Very difficult living conditions. The difficulty of verbal expression of the father (Spanish immigrant) and the little instruction of the mother are going, from adolescence and for a long time to generate a certain interest for the language and the "mental thing" (DEUG of philosophy (1994) and two years in L1-L2-L3 Modern Letters). 

This difficulty of transmission is going to make me dive, at the entrance of the DEUG philo, in the PAINTING as a means of mental survival, as a therapeutic mechanism aiming at reducing the increasing distance with the real, the world, the society. It is precisely Van-Gogh's painting, combined with his "biography" that completely seduce me. At the first brushstrokes I acquire the certainty to be one day "a painter and nothing else".

Painting takes precedence over the studies of Philosophy, over my mental world. Painting replaces a blurred social world.

Self-taught, I begin to copy Van-Gogh; I begin to be interested in the history of art, alone, without guides. I copy the impressionists, then the fauvists. A friend architect and painter initiates me to the bases of the perspective... Finally I discover the Cubism, hermetic which seems to me to be the best language to say the world... I try with obstinacy to force the historical reality and I imagine to be able to join Braque and Picasso through the acquisition of the cubist language, then, suddenly, the acme within reach (at least it was there the impression of the moment) I understood which utopia I had during six or seven years pursued!

2006, resignation from the job of draftsman in Leavers Lace to explore painting full time. Settling in the South-West, long series of moves, loneliness.

In 2012 I decide to break with all my practices, I leave oil and canvas for cardboard and gouache then acrylic ... I plunge then, without understanding why in the "portrait", to, once again, try to touch others with my fingertips, vain attempt, too strict conceptual device and refusal to communicate via the word.

2020, brutal awareness of a sterile path, too much camouflage, no sharing. Vision of the painting to be redefined, closer to the cinema, of a more "realistic" painting. Decision to conceptualize, to define the guidelines, to accept to succeed in the life of an artist and to definitively leave a destructive self-sabotage.