20191006_MUN_TallerAntonioLopez2019

With his usual smile and enthusiasm, the painter Antonio López has visited the stalls of the Ensanche Market in Pamplona this Monday to buy the material that will be used for the XIII edition of the painting workshop Maestros de la Figuración, which takes place from today until next Friday 14 at the University of Navarra Museum.

Accompanied by his friend and fellow workshop participant, fellow painter Juan José Aquerreta, he has acquired a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, cans of preserves and pickles, beef and ham bones, eggs and bouquets of peonies and lilies, among other flowers of different colors and shapes. The artist has also purchased several vases and containers for fill in the still lifes to be painted by the workshop participants. "The most tender, the most beautiful thing in life, which are the flowers, with the things that feed us, with which the Spanish still lifes have been constituted", said Lopez, who appreciates very much this Pamplona market: "There is everything".

As in previous editions, participants will also work on the human figure with natural female and male models. This year, the one with the highest participation, the workshop has 30 students, of different ages, training and from eight countries: Spain, Australia, Portugal, Italy, United States, Romania, Ecuador and Israel. "Each workshop is different, different things happen. It is a painters' meeting where people talk and paint. We paint to talk. There are some repeat participants, but there are always unexpected things that arise depending on how the painting is going and its difficulties or facilities".

López, who has been teaching the workshop for thirteen years, emphasizes that it is a special opportunity that allows him to enter "in contact with people united by love and the difficulty of painting". For the artist, the most important thing is to be in good health, since "the workshop is an act of generosity and you need to be able to give".

About the scenario in which the workshop is held, in a contemporary art museum, with abstract works by authors such as Rothko, Palazuelo or Picasso, he stressed that painting unites them: "Painting, which is always the same, a mystery that transmits emotions that we don't know how to define very well, is a marvel and unites us all painters, even if they are from the most different periods or aesthetics. It is a marvel and unites us all painters, even if they are from the most different periods or aesthetics".