1959.46 Jose Antonio Fernández Muro, Violet Red on Grey, 1958

In 1938, at the height of the Spanish Civil War, José Antonio Fernández Muro and his family fled Madrid for Argentina, where he began training under celebrated Catalan painter Vicente Puig. Fernández Muro’s individual style took time to evolve; his first decade of painting produced works closely resembling his instructor’s figural, realist images. It was only in the 1950s that Fernández Muro abandoned the aesthetic remnants of pre-war Spain and moved his paintings toward abstraction. The length and expanse of shapes along the canvas’s edges are juxtaposed with the tightly contained assemblage of forms blossoming from the center of the canvas. By surrounding the vibrant reds and magentas of the central circular shapes with an arrangement of rectilinear forms in a gradient of grays, Fernández Muro focuses our attention on a specific area and stabilizes a composition of overlaid forms.

Tower Gallery: Latin American Art, Label text, 2017.

Fernández Muro_Jose Antonio: ULAN: 500117890

Spain (nation): TGN: 1000095

Madrid (Spain): TGN: 7380605

Argentina (nation): TGN: 7006477

oil paint: AAT: 300015050

canvas: AAT: 300014078

painting (visual works): AAT: 300033618

violet (color): AAT: 300130602

red (color): AAT: 300126225

gray (color): AAT: 300130811

pink (color): AAT: 300124707

figures (representations): AAT: 300189808

abstract: AAT: 300108127

abstraction: AAT: 300056508

geometric motifs: AAT: 300009764

geometric abstraction: AAT: 300056509

geometric shape: AAT: 300263819

circles (plane figures): AAT: 300055627

lines (geometric concept): AAT: 300056279

spheres (geometric figures): AAT: 300055639

spherical (geometric shape): AAT: 300378898

squares (geometric figures): AAT: 300055637

rectangles (parallelograms): AAT: 300055636

violence: AAT: 300192799

wars: AAT: 300055314

battles: AAT: 300185692

civil wars: AAT: 300055315

Catalan (culture or style): AAT: 300263657

painters (artists): AAT: 300025136

Puig_Vicente: DMA

figurative art: AAT: 300056499

Realist (style): AAT: 300172861

form (composition concepts): AAT: 300056272

circular (shape): AAT: 300263827

composition (artistic arrangement): AAT: 300056255

balance (composition concept): AAT: 300056247

layers (components): AAT: 300226788

From 1959: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas Art Association Purchase, purchased from the artist [1], [2], [3]

[1] The main source for this provenance was existing information in TMS (in Dallas Museum of Art Digital Collections Records Object Files). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.  

[2] The main source for this provenance is letter from Jerry Bywaters, Director of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, to Jose Antonio Fernández Muro (dated December 10, 1959, copy in Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records Object File, Confidential). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.

[3] The main source for this provenance is letter (inventory list) (n.d., copy in Dallas Museum of Art Collections Records Object File, Confidential). Exceptions and other supporting documents are noted.

[4] The Dallas Art Association is the predecessor to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The name was abandoned in 1970. Works from this collection were transferred to the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts. The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.