Agustín Rio Navarro Biography
Agustín Navarro Rio was born in Barcelona the 6 June from 1923, of Galician ancestry concretely of Betanzos by paternal line; the mother was brother of the writer Josep Navarro Costabella. Formed in the LLotja and the Cercle Artístic de Sant Lluc, he has also cultivated successfully, besides the painting, the poster and the stage scene. He also worked like apprentice in the factory of the Sindicat de Dibuixants that headed the poster designer and illustrator Andalusian Helios Gómez, like apprentice, participated in the artistic activities of masses of the Comissariat de Propaganda of the Catalan Autonomous Government, in company, among others, of Antoni Clavé and Jordi Alumà. She worked already with the stage designer Amadeo Asensio, of whose factory she will happen, like assistant, to the one of Mestres Cabanes. In Paris she collaborated to the accomplishment of scenery according to bocetos of Russian painter Marc Chagall, orders that received from the prestigious Pelegry theatrical designer in whose study it worked until by reasons for health it was itself needed to leave. Returned to Barcelona, she concentrates his activity in the painting, technique in which has come presenting/displaying exhibitions and reaping the attention from the critic and collectors: samples exhibited in Spanish and French galleries in which it has gained own expression within a figuration that it looks for mainly - as already it is announced the subjects in the citizen suburbs, reasons that translate, without betraying his truth, properly poetizados. Load of feeling that finds in the tenderness of its language, the diction, the precise accent: for that reason the scenes that register in their pictures, count or not with the human presence, they appear contemplated and realised through a subjetivación that conserves the reference. Model that Agustín Rio transfers to the fabric using as a trowel, that does to abound in grays and ranges serious, that facilitates a atmosferización that adds, to the representations, a certain magicismo of clear lyrical version. It contributes to it a composition drawn with simplicity that, through a sober pincelación, breaking the discursiva line, grants as much to the diction somewhat similar to a tremor that adds, to the writing - of the drawing as the one of the color a certain ingenuista touch that it is, simultaneously, evocative and representative: sense, this one last one, that Agustín River accentuates, also, when it is the figure the one that reaches protagonism, presence that finds face and that shows, always, the spirit who internalises. Thus to the pictures and figures of children and humble people can be contemplated - alive expression of the reality that it surrounds to them that it offers meaning when interpreting them like lengthy in a hope that does not dream. To emphasize the thickness of the brush-strokes and the matter that applies dense, rich in veladuras and transparencies, they can be some data - the words are not enough - that explain a painting, like hers, done with the heart. Realised serving as leguaje of root expresionista that if he is direct in his exhibition, does - to contemplates who to suspect it inspired - as very rightly he has noticed the critic of art and poet Rafael SantosTorroella- ''in the memory, in the unforgettable harvest of slow impressions that they found in him an answer emotiva'' turned, by a plastic poet of the daily one, by work painter, of sensible artist. For that reason whichever subjects undertake - urban faces, streets, reasons, maternities, interiors with figures… - receive, besides the truth that represent the one that corresponds to the spirit of its author: poet who replaces the words and the sense of verses by the language that is born from the drawing and the color. Language that makes legible through a personal figurativismo that does not hide the great dose of feeling that nests painter Agustín Navarro Rio.
Criticisms: ''Agustín Río painter with a lyricism in the trowel that is able to put itself to sing aloud, dot and on the inside luminous poetry by outside, of that house seen with love, felt with faith in the color and harmony in the balance. Their figures are not looked like their houses, are faded a little. It seems as if it felt the fear to finish them not discovering his ingenuous secret, because all of them have ingenuous secret and seems that it leaves them defenseless before the eyes. Good, this is a White poetry, said in low voice, very low sometimes almost said as if it did not say it and this resists a little with its streets that aloud sing in the light of the morning and of la tarde'' Fernando Gutiérrez.
Prizes: 1961 Rescuing Prize ''Alavedra'' Painting Contest summoned by ''Amics of them Arts'', Terrassa.
Exhibitions:
1953 Galería El jardin1960 Galerías Art Hogar, Bilbao Galería Fortunet, Figueras. Galería Díaz Pacheco, Rosas. 1962 Grifé y Escoda, Madrid. Amics de les Arts, Terrassa 1962 Grifé y Escoda , Madrid 1963 Galerías Minorica, Palma de Mallorca 1966 Galerías Grifé y Escoda, Barcelona. 1972 Galerías Grifé y Escoda, Barcelona 1973 Invitado por el Dr Juan Orejas, marcha a Oviedo, donde en esta ocasión como en otras sucesivas, desarrollará notables campañas pictóricas. Galería de la Obra Social y Cultural de la Caja de Ahorros de Asturias. 1974 Exposición en la Galería Marqués de Uranga, Gijón. 1975 A partir de este año, varias exposiciones en colectivas por Francia organizadas por el Fondo Internacional de Pintura de Barcelona. 1977 Mitre Gallery, Barcelona 1978 Galería Dera, Palma de Mallorca 1980 Galería Zodíaco, Madrid. 1981 Fondo Internacional de Pintura, Barcelona, 1981 Galería Kreisler, Barcelona. 1983 Galería Comas, Barcelona. 1986 Galería Grifé Escoda, Barcelona. Grand Palais, Cap d’Adge, Université Paul Valery, Monpelier. 1990 Sala Rusiñol.