Being old has made me freer", says Antonio López (Tomelloso, 1936), who at the age of 87 opens today at the Catalunya Pedrera Foundation his first major monographic exhibition in Barcelona, a journey through 70 years of creation with which the master of Spanish realism, Princess of Asturias Award for the Arts and Velázquez Award for the Plastic Arts, lands in the city where in winter he began to paint from the sky of the MNAC and Park Güell. During the hours before the doors open, the artist moves lightly between the eighty works that make up the exhibition, answers the questions without avoiding any question and chooses to be photographed next to a self-portrait just taken from from a photograph of him when he was six months old.
We need to value it so that, in the 21st century, we can continue to go out to paint in nature and stand with our easel and our paintings surrounded by curious people. What does the street give you?
Going out not only helps me paint the place, with its light, its sounds. The life of the painter is a life of solitude. I've been drawing in my studio in there, alone, hours and hours, days and days, whole weeks... From time to time I like to go out into the world, because I like the world, I like the people i need it
To go out is to be outdoors.
I always come back with a gift. It's not that this happens to me, it's that I find this. A face that I liked, some words that were said to me, a gesture that reached me. Apart from that, I need the natural, the precision of the tone, the precision of the light, the temperature. All this you only get when you are on site. Seeing how the sun, the light is changing, is something very alive.
Isn't this attempt to stop time maddening?
It's always been that way. Corot, one of the first to paint directly from a landscape in the mid-19th century, knew that if he chose the morning to paint, because he likes the light better, he would have to interrupt it in the afternoon. The sun limits you, you can't paint for more than three hours straight. Painting in the open air has regulations, just like making a child or having lunch. You learn it, like perspective, which was a mystery until someone discovered the rules.
Where have you found more mystery, in life or in art?
The mystery of life is an unfathomable mystery. In art, everyone does what they can to catch it. If not, it is an uninhabited thing. What inhabits it, the thing that makes it great in the moments when art is great, which is not always achieved, is that mystery, the emotion that you have felt and transferred.
And you who portray the world, what would you change?
The first, the politicians, and immediately after, the educators. If these two do it right, all social injustice, all excesses would end, cities would not be so big, we would be more sensitive to nature and we would not be using things for our benefit. Now there are many of us. Humanity has grown terribly. We have many needs and we will put an end to everything. It looks awful to me. I pick up the newspaper and see that there is a species of Tasmanian tiger that no longer exists and I think it's a shame. There has been in man an obsession with God. Our God told us grow, multiply and the world is at your service. This cannot be so, because man already has excessive power over nature, which is the greatest of all.
What makes you lose sleep?
I sleep very well. It is my salvation. I don't feel like eating. I might not eat. But sleep saves me. I had a season of unexpected insomnia and I was really scared, really scared.
He is not left blank by the controversy that his project for the doors of the Burgos cathedral has caused, in which he has even spoken out against Unesco and which has a budget of 1.2 million euros?
No, it doesn't make me sleepy.
Does the criticism affect you?
Yes, but that shouldn't be an impediment to me doing what I have to do. This Burgos thing must continue because the work is paid.
Would you let it go?
No. The artist's work, since the Impressionists, has been done outside the commission. That is why it has acted with such freedom. In this case someone ordered these doors for me. I was very interested in it because it is my first work on a religious subject. And people you don't know or know who they are, but with a lot of power, decided that my doors shouldn't be there. If it can't happen, it won't happen. Nothing happens either.
He is not the first artist to stumble upon something like this.
Miguel Ángel was almost overthrown for his Last Judgment, in which all the characters were naked and it seemed impossible in the Sistine Chapel. Caravaggio was refused paintings. Little by little the Church has become very distant from us, more than we are from it. In this case she approached me, not me to her, and she was deceived.
What means?
Well, I'm deceiving, without pretending to be. There is a will in me to reach a bottom that I don't know what it will be and that maybe for the person who commissioned it, it may be unbearable. Because she saw my flowers, she saw landscapes of Madrid, she saw portraits, and they disoriented her... But the doors are made with a lot of respect. When all this came up they called me to talk about it, but I never wanted to. It's a story that has been repeated a lot and when it's your turn, you hold on. I insist, since I have been paid I must finish it.
Has he ever stopped believing in himself?
I think I have achieved a lot, I have managed to live from my work and live well. I know there are people who my work helps them, they like it; to me this already seems a lot. How far do you have to go? Do you have to conquer absolutely everything? Logically, no. I accept the limits. If I can't go to the Venice Biennale, I don't go. And if I can't be at Reina Sofia, I'm not there. I am here. It is clear that when I was hanged at the Reina Sofia I liked it and when it was not, I was disgusted. But that can't stop you. There will always be people who don't accept you.
Are there any good things about getting old?
Being old has made me freer. I now talk about things and can do things that I couldn't before. At a very young age I acted very freely, because I was starting something and I didn't know it yet. Innocence made me free. And now knowledge has made me freer. This freedom, this vision of the 87-year-old has made me, for example, find beauty in the destruction of flowers, to see that a flower when it dies can have enormous beauty. And then there is the understanding of others. I understand them better.
Are you afraid of death?
It's just that I don't think about it, I don't feel it. In the people I love, I do feel this threat, but mine, if it is hidden behind that column, I do not perceive it. It's like I never have to die.
Last year he began to paint for the first time two views of Barcelona from the MNAC and Park Güell. How does the city look from there?
Barcelona from the MNAC is a dazzling spectacle, with the winter sun falling head-on over the city in front of you. And then I started another one from the opposite side, looking towards the sea, installed on the terrace of a house in Park Guëll.
What other jobs do you have going on?
A lot! I have to make a crucified Christ for the New cathedral in Vitoria. The crucified is in our history since we are born. It is a very old subject and has been painted in many ways.
What will yours be like?
I want to make my Christ, who is a man and therefore dies. And at the same time it is an invention of man.
Are you a believer?
No, not like before. But what has led to the creation of religion is in our heart and in our psychological need. So you always have stuff left over and you work with that.
