Eugenio Fernández Granell was a significant contributor to the Surrealist movement. Born in La Coruña, Spain, in 1912, Granell took up an interest in art and music as a child and, at the age of sixteen, moved to Madrid to begin studying violin at the Escuela Superior de Música. At the Spanish Civil War outbreak, while contributing articles about music and politics to various magazines, Granell joined the Left Opposition party and, in 1935, the P.O.U.M. (Worker’s Party of Marxist Unification) party. He first encountered Surrealism by meeting Pierre Naville, a French Surrealist.
In 1939, Granell was forced into exile to France. While setting sail for Chile a year later, he and his future wife Amparo received news that Chile was no longer accepting refugees. The couple settled in the Dominican Republic instead. There, he began painting the island. In 1941, after interviewing exiled artist and Surrealist André Breton, Granell showed him his paintings and was encouraged by Breton to join the Surrealist movement. In 1945, Granell held his first individual show at the National Gallery of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo. Granell and his family relocated to Guatemala, and in 1947, he was invited by Breton and Marcel Duchamp to officially participate in the Surrealist movement in Paris by exhibiting at the Maeght Gallery. In 1949, Granell was forced to flee once more from the Guatemalan revolution, settling in Puerto Rico, where he began teaching art at the university. He published his first book, “Isla cofre mítico,” exhibited in shows and organized gatherings, where groups of his students would paint and discuss art in a studio called El Mirador Azul. In 1954, Granell held a solo exhibition at L’Etoile scellée in Paris.
Granell retired in 1985 and was able to return to Spain and settle back in Madrid, where his contributions to the Surrealist movement were recognized while his works were prominently exhibited. In 1995, the Eugenio Granell Foundation was created in Santiago de Compostela, dedicated to Surrealism and housing Granell’s artworks, archives, correspondence and photos.
