The city that inspires: Madrid through the eyes of Antonio López
Antonio López has devoted his life to observing, with extraordinary attention, the most everyday and elemental aspects of our world: streets that seem to breathe, flowers unfolding in silence, fields that preserve the memory of time. In his work, the Spanish landscape becomes a pulse, a way of naming who we are. Yet among all these settings, one city stands as his true muse: an intimate territory to which he returns again and again on canvas. Madrid, with its unique balance of harmony and restraint, has been for him an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
In his paintings, López captures the most varied corners of the capital, from its urban arteries to the edges where the city dissolves into open countryside. Each work seems to contain a glimmer of Madrid’s essence, that discreet magic revealed only to those who know how to look. As he himself confessed in an interview for the Paisajes edition: “A place that moves me, because I find an echo of my life there, is where Madrid ends and the countryside begins, on the outskirts. The borderlands of Madrid.”
- Madrid, 1960
This painting, titled simply with the name of the Spanish capital, is one of the first works in which Antonio López depicts the city from an elevated viewpoint, transforming its urban fabric into a pictorial subject. From above, the artist unfolds before the viewer a sea of buildings and rooftops stretching uninterruptedly into the distance, revealing the density and complexity of a capital in the midst of expansion.
The work marked the beginning of a path the artist from La Mancha would follow for decades: the exploration of Madrid from different heights, corners and atmospheres. Through his gaze, López reveals parts of the city that often pass unnoticed.
Madrid, 1960. Oil on panel, 122 × 244 cm. © Image of the works of Antonio López: Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022.
- Terraza de Lucio, 1961-1992
Antonio López began this work with an initial intention that he was unable to bring fully onto the canvas. His aim was to portray Lucio and Amalia with their first child on the terrace of their home, a space filled with flowers planted by Amalia.
For years, the painter set the painting aside, unable to find the inspiration needed to continue it. Later, when his friends no longer lived there, he returned to the place by chance. Time had transformed the space, and that change awakened in him a new way of seeing the work. He decided to alter its format, enlarge it and shift the vanishing point, turning the gap of the street, the aged wall and the mute presence of matter into the new subject that would give the painting its meaning.
Lucio’s Terrace, 1961–1992. Oil on panel, 172 × 207 cm. © Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022.
- Ventana de noche, 1971-1975
The window is one of the recurring motifs in Antonio López’s artistic career. He has painted it at different hours: at night, in spring, open and, at times, closed. Every variation has a purpose. Open windows symbolize the link between interior and exterior, while in closed windows the artist seeks to incorporate the room through the reflection on the glass.
For López, the window is not merely an architectural frame: it is a threshold where light, time and matter enter into dialogue. In his windows, the artist does not simply seek to represent what he sees, but to capture the way reality settles on the glass, reflects, distorts or conceals itself. That is why he returns to them again and again: they are laboratories of perception, territories where time becomes visible and where painting can explore its own limits.
Night Window, 1971–1975–1980. Oil on panel, 120 × 81 cm. © Image of the works of Antonio López: Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. © Photographs of the works: UMFotografía
- Atocha, 1964
“This is the first painting I did in the street, in Madrid. I painted it at dawn, next to Atocha railway station.” Antonio López recalls in the Art Book of the Paisajes (Landscape) edition. With this work, López portrayed the atmosphere of Madrid and the city’s everyday awakening. The half-light of the hour, the life and movement of passers-by were the elements he observed and that helped him bring the painting into being.
He did, in fact, try to include figures in motion, but the difficulty of doing so led him to seek another way of suggesting that human presence. In the lower part of the painting, on the asphalt, he drew two people as a symbol of life in the capital. For him, that gesture condensed both the visible life of Madrid and the life hidden in its streets when he first arrived from Tomelloso.
Atocha, 1964. Oil on panel, 95 × 105 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. © Image of the works of Antonio López: Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. © Photographs of the works: UMFotografía.
- Gran Vía, 1 de agosto, 7:30 horas, 2009-2015
This is one of the seven works that make up Antonio López’s first series, a group of paintings in which he portrays Gran Vía from different points of view. His intention was ambitious: to capture the passage of the day along the avenue, from dawn to dusk, through seven distinct perspectives on this street that cuts through the heart of the capital.
The project progressed unevenly. Some of the paintings reached a considerable degree of development, while others remained barely begun. Over time, certain locations the artist had been working on changed so profoundly that it became impossible for him to continue. That impossibility also becomes part of the series’ narrative: a testimony to the way Madrid’s landscape transforms even as one attempts to fix it in paint.
Gran Vía, August 1, 7:30 a.m., 2009–2015. Oil on canvas, 126 × 130 cm. © Image of the works of Antonio López: Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. © Photographs of the works: UMFotografía.
- El metro, 1970-1972
This painting is not a landscape, but a corner of the Madrid Metro, one of the means of transport most deeply embedded in the daily life of the city’s inhabitants. In Antonio López’s words, recorded in the Art Book of Paisajes: “I have never learned to drive. The bus and, especially, the underground, have always been my means of getting around Madrid since I arrived in 1949..”
As the artist explained in this edition, at a certain moment that corner of the Madrid Metro—the Sol station, in the direction of Plaza de Castilla—struck him as a particularly expressive motif of the underground city. He requested permission and began the painting, but, as happened with other works, he was unable to finish it. To make progress, he needed to work in the early hours of the morning, when the public no longer moved through the corridors. That need for absolute solitude, together with the logistical complexity involved, made it impossible for him to complete the work.
The Metro, 1970–1972. Oil on panel, 97 × 122 cm. © Image of the works of Antonio López: Antonio López, VEGAP, Madrid, 2022. © Photographs of the works: UMFotografía.
Paisajes (Landscape) by Antonio López:
– A limited edition of 2,998 copies, hand-numbered and individually signed by the artist.
– The edition comprises an Art Book and a giclée print, preserved and displayed in a case-exhibitor designed exclusively for this edition.
– The Art Book offers a vital and artistic journey through texts and paintings, presenting chronologically the influence of life on Antonio López’s work, and of painting on his life.
– The giclée print is produced on cotton paper to museum-quality standards and bears the artist’s digital signature.
