Luis Gordillo studied law in Seville (1951-1956), before deciding to devote himself to painting, enrolling in the Santa Isabel de Hungría School of Fine Arts (1956-1958). In the summer of 1958 he travelled to Paris, where he encountered informalist painting and made his first abstract and gestural works. In 1962, he settled in Madrid. Since then, he has introduced figurative references into his work, with his particular interpretation of elements derived from a pop aesthetic. He also began undergoing psychoanalysis, a methodology that is essential for any understanding of the aesthetic construction of his work, as evidenced by his series The Heads (1963-1965). In 1967, critic Juan Antonio Aguirre listed him among a group he dubbed the Nueva Generación [New Generation]. Thenceforth, Gordillo acted as a leading reference point, bridging the gap between the informalist generation and the new Madrid figuration of the 1970s. In the 1980s, his work became more complex, organic and cellular. He duplicated motifs and chromatic variations, establishing a complex personal grammar in which he introduced a diverse constellation of symbolic elements, real and imaginary, which he has developed over subsequent decades.

He achieved early recognition and his work was shown at international events including the Venice Biennale (1970 and 1976) and the São Paulo Biennial (1985). His first anthological exhibition at the M-II Art Centre (Seville, 1974), was followed by others at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (Valencia, 1993); the Meadows Museum (Dallas, USA, 1994); Círculo de Bellas Artes (Madrid, 1997 & 2004); the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (1999); the Folkwang Museum (Essen, Germany, 2000); the Reina Sofía Museum (Madrid, 2007-2008) and the Kunstmuseum (Bonn, 2007-2008); the Malaga Centre for Contemporary Art (2012); the Basque Centre / Museum of Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz (2002 and 2014); and the Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Art (Seville, 2016). He has been awarded the National Prize for the Visual Arts (1981), the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts (1996) and the Velázquez Prize for Plastic Arts (2007). In 2007, the French government named him a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2007)

Roberto Díaz