Arroyo drew Baron Pierre de Coubertin’s face on the newspaper L’Auto, dated Wednesday 8 September 1937, in remembrance of the Baron. The newspaper reported on his burial.
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Title: The Baron's face on the newspaper "L'Auto", Wednesday 8th September.
Description: Dated and signed: “Arroyo1997” lower down.
Artistic school or movement: Eduardo Arroyo attended the "Lycée français" and the "Instituto de Nuestra Señora de la Almudena" and finally studied journalism. He left Spain in 1958 to avoid Franco’s regime, settling in Paris. He tried to pursue his journalistic career but he soon discovered that he was far more attracted to the visual world of pictures. In Parisian bars, Arroyo started his art career as caricaturist with colourful narrative figuration infused with socio-political content and caustic wit. Arroyo also dared to caricature established artists such as Dali, Miró and Duchamp, which earned him biting criticism. After Franco’s death in 1976, he returned to Spain, where he was officially honoured.
His work developed from expressionism to neofigurative realism, which reflected on the pictorial language and function of painting and the artist’s role in society. He manipulated ready-made images, words and elements derived from commercial art and the work of other painters. Stylistically, Arroyo's mostly ironic, colourful works are at the crossroads between the trends of "nouvelle figuration" or "figuration narrative" and pop art. A characteristic of his representations is the general absence of spatial depth and the flattening of perspective. After the restoration of democracy in Spain, his art seemed to be less tortured by the obsession of his exile and by conflicting history. In 1969 he also worked as a set and costume designer. In 1997, The Olympic Museum, in Lausanne, organised an exhibition of his paintings dedicated to boxing and his “Senefelder Suite”, consisting of 102 engraving prints paying tribute to Aloys Senefelder.