LUIS SEOANE LÓPEZ (Buenos Aires, 1910 - A Coruña,... Lot n° 40

LUIS SEOANE LÓPEZ (Buenos Aires, 1910 - A Coruña, 1979). "Character next to a donkey". Mixed media on paper. Signed in the lower right corner. Size: 44 x 31 cm; 75 x 65 cm (frame). A draughtsman, painter, engraver and writer, Luis Seoane trained in A Coruña, where he practised as a lawyer and was a member of the Partigo Galeguista, and in 1936 he settled in Buenos Aires. In his youth he took part in the political and cultural activity of students in A Coruña and, according to the historian and journalist Carlos Fernández Santander, Seoane could be the author who, under the pseudonym of Hernán Quijano, wrote "Galicia Mártir. Episodes of the white terror in the Galician provinces", a book published in Paris and Argentina in 1938. In 1932 he graduated in Law and Social Sciences in Santiago de Compostela, and in those years he began his career in various fields. Between 1927 and 1933 he was active in Republican and autonomist left-wing parties, illustrated books and magazines and held his first exhibitions. In 1934 he returned to A Coruña from Santiago and began to work as a lawyer, while sharing gatherings with Huici, Cebreiro, Fernández Mazas, Del Valle, Julio J. Casal, Francisco Miguel and others. That same year he joined the Partido Galeguista. Two years later he took part in the campaign for the Statute of Autonomy, but when war broke out he was forced to flee to the Argentine capital. Once settled in Buenos Aires, he kept in touch with other compatriots exiled from Franco's regime, among them the painter Leopoldo Nóvoa and the activist María Miramontes. In 1937 he published his first book there, "Trece estampas de la traición". Three years later he founded the collections "Hórreo" and "Dorna" at EMECÉ Editores, and in 1943 he created the magazine "Correo Literario" and the publishing house Editorial Nova. Two years later, his "Homenaje a la Torre de Hércules" (Homage to the Tower of Hercules) was awarded a prize in New York. In 1948 he founded the publishing house Botella al Mar, and the following year he travelled around Europe and exhibited in London. Between 1952 and 1962 he exhibited in New York, founded the magazine "Galicia Emigrante" and the publishing house Citania, and was awarded prizes such as the medal of the Universal Exhibition in Brussels, the medal of the Senate of the Argentine Nation (1958) and the Palanza Prize (1962). At the same time, he worked for the Buenos Aires gallery Gordons, directed by Roberto Mackintosh, an expert and great connoisseur of his work. In the last decades of his life he alternated his residence in America with trips to Galicia, and in 1977 the first complete edition of his poetic work was published. Between 1963 and 1979 he held exhibitions in Spain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Brazil and other countries. In 1994 the Día de las Letras Gallegas was dedicated to him, and in 2003 the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo in Santiago de Compostela dedicated an important retrospective exhibition to him, which was later taken to the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires. He is currently represented in the Caixanova Collection, among many others.