Antonio Saura was a Spanish Post-War artist who is considered one of the most important avant-garde painters of his time. His abstracted biomorphic forms are rough-hewn and gestural, suggestive of passionate emotion and subject matter. “Beyond useless discussions of figurative or abstract art is the imperious necessity to express oneself as one is,” the artist once remarked, “making ours all the energetic possibilities of the universe.” Initially inspired by the Surrealist artists who were his contemporaries, Saura often painted in black and white and worked with motifs ranging from nude and female forms to tumultuous gathering crowds. A particularly well-known work is Hiroshima mon amour (1963), a painting who tackles the violent aftermath of a nuclear bombing and takes its title from the influential French novel by Marguerite Duras. Born on September 22, 1930 in Huesca, Spain, Saura was largely self-taught, and was influenced as a child by classic Spanish painters like Francisco Goya and Diego Velázquez. A childhood illness of tuberculosis led to a long confinement, during which he began painting and writing. Saura would later help found the avant-garde group El Paso, or “The Step,” in Madrid along with Rafael Canogar, Manolo Millares, and Luis Feito López, who were interested by furthering the strategies of American Abstract Expressionism and French Art Informel. Saura’s work has been exhibited around the world, notably in the 1958 Venice Biennale. The artist died on July 22, 1988 in Cuenca, Spain at 88 years old.