Antonio Lopez Garcia

Spanish realist painter-sculptor Antonio Lopez Garcia, born in 1936, taps the secrets latent in everyday scenes or objects--a backyard, a subway, a woman in a bathtub, a factory. An artist of many moods and styles, he depicts photorealistic street scenes that thrust the viewer into their sweeping perspectives; nighttime vistas shot through with magic and poetry; plaster reliefs that hark back to Greek friezes. His bold wooden full-length sculptures of a nude man and woman with quizzical expressions seem metaphors for human existence. In this lavish monograph, Madrid art critic Serraller explores ``the flow of symbols, allegories and situations'' in Lopez Garcia's work, while Sullivan, art professor at New York University, assesses the emotional impact of his sculpture. In an interview, Brenson, art critic for the New York Times , draws out Lopez Garcia on his working methods and the influence of Picasso and Dali on his outlook. (Dec.)