Antonio Murado

Von Lintel Gallery is pleased to present new paintings by New York artist, Antonio Murado. Distances marks the artist’s fifth solo show with the gallery and his first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Murado is a technical virtuoso who returns to familiar motifs to continue experimenting with the capacity of paint to express the realities of nature. Whereas many artists lament the mind’s habitual reflex to interpret a horizontal piece as a landscape, Murado embraces it. His work hinges upon illusion as he conjures forms without actually rendering them. From a distance, latitudinal swipes of rusted orange or chartreuse green anchor apparent twinkling cityscapes or mountain ranges. But in actuality, the works are deft striations of pigment impressed with textural patterns.

Similarly, material investigation and process reinvigorate traditional conceits of still life. Canvases are treated with delicate, transparent layers of oil and turpentine that underwrite pools of paint, blown with air. The shapes may mimic flower petals floating in mid-air or across a flow of water, but it is gesture that reigns here over figuration.

“The results of these experiments in alchemical materiality is a variegated series of paintings that, with infinite nuance, convey Murado’s own plastic versions of the different domains of the life of nature.” —Alexandre Melo, ArtForum.

Murado was born in Lugo, Spain in 1964 and graduated from the University of Salamanca. Shown internationally in multiple solo and group exhibitions around the world, Murado’s paintings are now held in prominent museum, corporate, and private collections including The Galician Center of Contemporary Art, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; The Museum of Fine Art, Vitoria, Spain; The Nagasaki Art Museum, Japan; and in the collections of Phillip Morris, American Express, Chase Manhattan Bank, AXA, Pfizer, and The Coca-Cola Corporation.

Murado lives and works in New York City.