Fausto Olivares
Fausto Olivares Palacios (1940–1995) was an Andalusian painter born in Jaén. He studied Fine Arts in Madrid. He traveled to Paris and other cities in Europe before returning to Jaén in 1966, where he taught drawing and painting at the School of Arts and Crafts (now School of Art Joseph Nogué), where he served later as director. He left in 1981 his teaching activity to pursue an artistic career that led him to exhibit in many cities in Spain and Europe. With Françoise Gérardin, he had three sons: Fausto, Jaime and Efrén. He died in his hometown in  May 1995. There is an Atelier-Museum Fausto Olivares in France. In 2010, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of her husband's birth, Françoise Gérardin published a work in French: "Evocations, my husband, Fausto Olivares, painter". His life. Early years. Fausto Olivares Cózar and Sérvula Palacios Cózar lived in the Magdalena district of Jaén, during the end of the Spanish Civil War. They lost their first daughter, Flor, just a few months old. Then Fausto (1940), Jose, Francisco, Ceferino, Maribel, Domingo Jesús, Pedro and Maria Florencia were born. Despite the difficult times of the post-Franco period, the  family tried to give every child a proper education. From his childhood, Fausto showed clear artistic predispositions, and concretized his skills by learning from the hand of D. Enrique Barrios, and later in the company of Francisco Cerezo Moreno. During his teenage years, he alternated working hours with his father and his brothers with drawing and painting classes. At the same time he made some works that allowed him to reach already a little notoriety in the city. He prepared the entrance examination at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, with Don Pablo Martín del  Castillo, and at the age of 18, he left for the Spanish capital. At the School of Fine Arts, he had for companions Dario Villalba, Ángel Estrada, Isidro López Murias. His friend Luis Santiago, a musician, gave him the opportunity to meet flamenco artists like Pepe el de la Matrona, Lola Flores, Antonio Mairena ... Flamenco would later mark an important aspect in the life and work of the artist. painter. He took advantage of summer vacation periods to travel in Spain (León, Galicia), France (harvest) and Europe (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany), but also during the last years of studies while doing  his military service in the Canary Islands. During all his travels, he made sketches, paintings and even organised an exhibition during his military service. Return to Jaén. Once his studies were over, he travelled again to France, and especially to Paris, where three of his brothers lived and worked. He met his future wife Françoise Gérardin. He had as a friend Alfredo Vila Monasterio, with whom he discovered certain modalities of abstract art. After a new trip to Europe, he returned to Jaén to settle there almost definitively, first as a modeling teacher, then as a teacher of drawing and  painting at the School of Arts and Crafts. He tries to combine his passions: painting, photography, flamenco and travels. He makes frequent trips to France, exhibits in England, and at the same time deepens his expression with expeditions throughout Andalusia. With Antonio Povedano Bermúdez and others, he takes part in a monographic exhibition: "El Flamenco en el Arte Actual", which travels the country for years. He was appointed director of the School of Arts and Crafts (1978), a charge he will be responsible for four years, before applying for layoff to be fully dedicated to painting. New travels. From 1983 , he moved his studio to the coasts of Malaga, where his painting took new lights, then to the Vosges for family reasons. These trips led him to multiply solo exhibitions in Andalusia and in the north of France: museums and galleries interested in the style of this Andalusian painter, whose deep expressiveness contrasted with the traditional reserve of the Nordic regions. The illness surprised him while he was working on illustrations for a book of poems by Ramon Porras, Arco del Consuelo. After Holy Week of 1995, Fausto died at his home in Jaén the night of May 13. His  work. Fausto Olivares' style, from the moment he reached his own autonomy, is part of the movement known in Europe as "figurative neo-expressionism". Most of his work is done in oil on canvas or on wood. He also executed a large number of pen, coal, and pencil drawings, among which stand out his portraits of artists, who "were born from the pencil of Fausto, above all, to serve as a testimony and relic of an evening Flamenco enthusiasm". Analysis. Manuel Kayser Zapata illustrates as follows the trajectory of Fausto: ""His aesthetic evolution was very coherent, at the beginning of  his singular creative necessity he let himself be impregnated by the avant-garde movements that struggled to win He had many exhibitions in Madrid during the time of his formation, Fausto felt that he was a child of his time, and as such he was aware of his responsibility, and later on his aesthetics would be exclusively for his own internal communication needs."" Fausto Olivares and the Flamenco. Ramón Porras writes: ""The name Flamenco expressionism can be confusing: it is not an art that reflects the literality of the moods, characters or anecdotes of the flamenco world, but a deeply  flamenco art in itself. To put it another way, Fausto does not paint La Soleá, but his painting sings by" soleá"."" Chronology. This chronology incorporates the dates of the life and the work of Fausto Olivares.