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Eugenio Granell
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Eugenio Granell (28 November 1912 – 24 October 2001) was an artist often described as the last Spanish Surrealist painter.
Born in La Coruña in the north-western region of Galicia, Eugenio Fernández Granell started out as a political radical and a musician.
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Eugenio Granell (28 November 1912 – 24 October 2001) was an artist often described as the last Spanish Surrealist painter.
Born in La Coruña in the north-western region of Galicia, Eugenio Fernández Granell started out as a political radical and a musician. In 1927 he set up the magazine SIR (Sociedad Infantil Revolucionaria) with his brother Mario, and in 1928 enrolled at the Escuela Superior de Música del Real Conservatorio in Madrid. Among his friends were Maruja Mallo, Joaquín Torres García, Alberto Sánchez and Ricardo Baroja. A member of the POUM (Workers’ Party for Marxist Unification) during the Civil War, he contributed actively to newspapers such as La Nueva Era, La Batalla and El Combatiente Rojo.
In 1939, he was exiled to France and subsequently the Dominican Republic. His affiliation with Trotsky made him the enemy of fascists and Stalinists and steered him towards a life marked by changes of residence. As María Zambrano said, during the first half of the twentieth century, Spain was a “master of dispersal and wastefulness” as it forced many of its most outstanding artists and intellectuals into a painful flight to other countries. Granell was one of those exiles from a very early age. France, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Guatemala and New York were his places of residence. In 1955, Granell travelled with Zanetti Candle to New York and built a strong friendship with Marcel Duchamp. Between 1957 and 1985 he lived mainly on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York, and was Professor Emeritus of Spanish Literature at City University of New York (CUNY).
In 1995 he opened the Fundación Granell in his home town Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain. The only museum in the world entirely devoted to surrealism, it holds some 600 of his paintings along with works by Picabia, Duchamp, Man Ray and Breton.
Although springing from the depths of his subconscious like that of all the surrealists, Granell’s work is influenced by the places where he lived, particularly the exuberance of the Caribbean and the blend of Spanish and native cultures. Surrealism recognises no social function of art other than that of liberating the individual and society from the repression of reason, allowing the creator to express his instincts and dreams. In 1959, André Breton organized an exhibit called The Homage to Surrealism Exhibition to celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism which exhibited works by Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara and Eugenio Granell.
There is absolutely no censorship in Granell’s work. Poetry blossoms, shrouding unrecognisable figures where trees, animals and people merge into hybrid beings that undergo constant metamorphosis. Works where the strong colours are framed insculptural compositions, in human figures on the verge of formal delirium, or in voluptuous compositions that appear to be a microscopic dimension of an unknown world. Playfulness, advocated by the surrealists as an expression of freedom, pervades the whole of this artist’s work. Granell’s dialogue and writing have always ironically mocked solemnity and reason itself. Such are his painting, his sculpture and his readymades: an extremely beautiful elegy to freedom and the purity of feelings.
The major books on Granell and his work, such as monographs and catalogues, are mostly in Spanish or Galician, but they are widely available in libraries throughout the world, including the United States. Granell also published a book of meditations and critical reflections on Picasso's Guernica, and this book is available in English as well as in Spanish and Galician (see "References" section).
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