Lucio Munoz

This marvelously illustrated volume provides a comprehensive look at Spanish painter Munoz (b. 1929). According to Alcaide, professor of art history in Madrid , Munoz was influenced by Cezanne, Klee and the avant-garde during the '50s, grew away from figurative work and preferred to use wood over canvas, a habit that persists today. The artist gouges and scores his multilayered wood surfaces, allowing natural and carved textures to help dictate his application of paint; his abstract reliefs focus on the nature of paint itself. Short chapters introduce each stage in Munoz's artistic evolution: his '60s pieces are geometric and generally somber; his '70s paintings are iconographic, alternately flat and heavily worked, and varied in color and tone; his late-'80s work is his most intricate, highlighted by brilliant, seemingly molten pigments. The 276 illustrations as reproduced here accurately represent the work's craggy surfaces and color shifts from subtle to vibrant; however, Alcaide's prose is diffuse and simplistic. (Dec.)