Antonio López García

• Name of work: Gran Via De Agosto
• Name of artist: Antonio Lopez Garcia
• Year of work: 2017

Content- The subject of this painting is a landscape/cityscape because of it’s dimensions and viewpoints. The image type is hyper-realism as it looks like a high-resolution photograph. I say this because it is a realistic painting with detail, however some areas is blurred and lacking the fine detail and structure like in the tree and rooftops. It was observed directly from the view of a balcony in Spain. The painting annotates spring and summer, afternoon teas and Spanish films.

Form– The artwork has got a good composition in my opinion. It was from a good view from a balcony. There is no empty space like a big section of sky, and same with roads or walls. It is at a good angle, capturing a long road ahead slightly to the left, and with nice buildings on the right. at the end of the road in the distance you can see a nice big building, maybe to make the viewer feel interested in whats up that road. It also shows just a bit of the balcony where the painting was done, not much but enough to show it’s from a high balcony. The painting also has a warm, pretty colour palette. In my opinion it is definitely very Spanish-looking due to the soft yellows, blues and pinks. There’s also a lot of pale grey used for the road which makes up a big part of the image along with a pastel green for the tree that blocks some of the street’s view. The pallette makes you feel relaxed and calm. The main shapes in this painting is the buildings that use a lot of straight lines and rectangular shapes; this is expected though due to it being an urban painting. The work holds together as an overall entity.

Process– The painting was made with paint on canvas from a balcony view; It might had been in Madrid as this is where he mainly works. He had used a hyper-realism technique where it was photograph-looking but quite smudged and blurred in some areas more than others. I this the painting started out as rough sketches on the canvas first, to lay out structure and composition, before applying paint, doing one section at a time. had evolved slowly over time as it was very well done and detailed. Garcia often would often work on many pieces at a time and sometimes would only do certain work in a particular season and if the season changed, he’d leave it and come back to it the following year. With this piece though, he completed it within the same year but over time. He was required to have patience to do this, and for the painting he required good painting and delecacy; he needed a still handand also creativeness and innovation to give it the hyper-realism look.

Mood– The painting captures warm, loving, and calm feelings from me. The theme of it seems to be love and friendship, warm weather and Spanish streets. The painting however causes criticism for a lot of public viewers. A lot of people feel angry at is and he his criticised because of it’s hyper-realism effect. I can imagine Garcia feeling happy and relaxed while painting this as it coveys nice feelings of life and nature. I’ts quiet, soothing and this mood is simply one in the moment.