Eduardo Arroyo (Madrid, 1937) painter, sculptor, set designer, poster designer and writer.

After completing his studies in journalism in Madrid he moved to Paris, intending to become a writer. His contact with groups of Spanish exiles reaffirmed his opposition to the Franco regime and at this time he began to paint. In 1961 he held his first individual exhibition (Claude Levin Gallery, Paris), which had a clear political content. Two years later this commitment, which he maintained steadfastly, led to a diplomatic protest by the Spanish government, which also censored his first exhibition in Spain. His rebellious attitude was not only reflected in his attitude to politics but also extended to other areas. He went on to express it in the world of art (seconded by G. Aillaud, with whom he had been working since his early days as a painter, and A. Recalcati).

He took part in the events of May 1968 and afterwards moved from Paris to Milan and Rome, where he designed sets for theatre director Klaus Grüber. His work in the theatre has been a constant feature of his career: in the 1970s alone he was responsible for eight major set designs, ranging from opera (Wagner and Berg) to plays by Brecht, Euripides and Arrabal.

In 1973 he returned to Paris. The following year, during a trip to Valencia, he was arrested and expelled from Spain. After this, the subject of exile concerned him for several years, during which Blanco White and Ángel Ganivet inspired an important series of deeply felt works.

In 1976 he recovered his Spanish passport and began to exhibit in Spain. There have been retrospectives of his work at the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. In 1982 he received the Ministry of Culture's National Award for the Visual Arts.

Currently he divides his time between Paris and Madrid. He is one of the leading exponents of pop art in Spain, a style he has cultivated and adapted for his own purposes, exploiting its narrative potential and using it to reflect ironically and critically on the historical, social, cultural and political life of Spain and, by extension, of the West.

T. Blanch refers to him as “an ally of those who, like Picabia and De Chirico, work in the always dangerous space of pictures with no network, on the borders between the visceral, discovery, obsession and failure”. As well as painting, he has not neglected his early vocation for literature and has experimented with genres such as essays, theatre and narrative.

AA.VV: Granada de fondo: colección de arte contemporáneo. Diputación de Granada, Granada, Granada Provincial Council, 2003 (catalogue)