Luis Eduardo Aute, the multifaceted artist who overcame fear
“In Paris, I worked as a director assistant for Godard and Malle. I speak Spanish, English, French, Tagalog, and Catalan. I love freedom and will defend it above all else. I like Camus, Bradbury, Picasso, Tàpies, pop art , Godard, Vadim, and my dog, Jim.”
Painter, singer, poet, filmmaker... that's how Luis Eduardo Aute (1943-2020) defined himself on the back cover of one of his albums, a multifaceted artist and "a man who made coherence a matter of life", according to Miguel Fernández, who has just published Me va la vida en ello (Plaza&Janés), an extensive biography of the composer of unforgettable songs such as Al alba, Las cuatro y diez, Pasaba por aquí or Rosas en el mar .
Luis Eduardo Aute, singer-songwriter
Alex Garcia / Own“The first time Aute set foot in Madrid, he was surprised to have arrived in a country where they had the air conditioning on outside,” his biographer recounts. It was winter, and Aute hadn't yet experienced cold—real cold, not the canned kind—because he was born in the Philippines, where he also spent his early childhood.
“Gumersindo Aute, the artist's father, worked for the Tobacco Company of the Philippines, which assigned him to Manila in the 1930s. There he met another Spanish woman, Amparito, and they married. Luis Eduardo was born in 1943 amid the bombs that destroyed much of the city during World War II. His mother and son were miraculously saved. His father also survived, and the family witnessed the reconstruction of the city until, in 1951, the Autes decided to return to Spain and settled in Madrid in an apartment on Pintor Rosales Street.”
During his Asian childhood, Aute received two gifts that would shape his life: a box of paints and a guitar. Musical success would take some time to arrive. His artistic success was immediate: “I started painting when I was six or seven; the first thing I drew was my father lying in bed,” Aute recalled in an interview with a Spanish publication at the age of 12. The young Aute, who confessed to being an admirer of Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Velázquez, and Zuloaga, already stood out as a painter at such an early age. The media described him as a “child prodigy.”
Read also The tragic suicide of Waldo de los Ríos, the successful musician of the 1960s and 1970s Leonor Mayor Ortega
“By the age of eight, he had already painted all his neighbors. At 16, he held his first solo exhibition. He was a complete artist. He didn't understand art as a collection of individual disciplines; he saw it as a whole and believed you had to know everything: someone who composes also paints, sculpts, makes films, or writes,” Fernández notes.
Little Luis Eduardo had received a third gift in Manila: his parents took him to the movies, and the boy fell in love with the seventh art. So when Hollywood arrived in Spain in the 1960s to film major color productions, Aute didn't hesitate to sign up for the shoot.
Read also Luis Eduardo Aute publishes his illustrated book 'El Giraluna' DRAFTING
“In 1962, he joined the Cleopatra crew, directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, as an English, French, and Spanish interpreter and second unit assistant director.” That job earned him some income, which he spent on a trip to Paris, where he “came into contact with singer-songwriters.”
By then, Aute was already composing and singing, sometimes in public, "to flirt." But that mere fun soon became much more. "Luis Eduardo was already dating Marichu, who would become his wife for life. She had two friends who sang, and Aute wrote songs for them: "Rosas en el mar" (Roses in the Sea), for Massiel, and "Daniel" (Daniel), for Mari Trini. "Rosas en el mar " (Roses in the Sea) was a hit," the biographer recalls.
From that moment on, everything went smoothly. A record executive convinced Aute to record his own songs. He released "Aleluya No. 1 ," an American songwriter heard it and covered it in English. It was such a hit in the United States that Aute was invited on American television, where he was compared to Bob Dylan.
LATE 60s, EARLY 70s. A YOUNG LUIS EDUARDO AUTE.
Other SourcesSo much success in so many ways was too much. “Aute suffered a crisis in 1968; he stopped painting and also acting because he was afraid of the public. He only sang on a few radio stations, but he continued composing for other artists, like Rosa León, who popularized his songs.”
Fernández explains that this aversion to the public was long-lasting. Luis Eduardo recovered in 1979 when he participated in a CNT rally and began to lose his fear. He returned to performing, and the audience invariably asked him to sing "Al alba ," a song he had composed in 1974 as a love song, but which became a symbol of anti-Francoism "when Rosa León dedicated it to the last people executed by the regime in 1975."
After losing his fear, Aute returned to painting and the stage. He joined his voice with those of other great singers and friends to offer memorable concerts such as the one on March 4, 1983 in Madrid. “Luis Eduardo performed Rosas en el mar, Aleluya nº1, A por el mar, Rojo y negro , and Al Alba . He gave way to Pabló Milanés, who sang Anda and Para vivir . Then Serrat came in to sing Paraules d'amor and De Alguien manera . Silvio Rodríguez followed with Dentro . And Teddy Bautista closed with Anda suelto Satanás .”
Friendship wasn't just a stage thing: "Everyone would gather at Aute's house. People of all ideologies would come to his apartment on Jorge Juan Street to have a drink and chat. An ideological fusion formed there, where they discussed everything without tension. It was in that apartment that Joan Manuel Serrat and Joaquín Sabina met one night when Aute invited them after appearing on a television program."
“Aute was invited to American television where he was compared to Bob Dylan.”Luis Eduardo Aute wrote hundreds of songs, published a dozen collections of poetry, participated as a screenwriter, director, or scenario designer in as many films, and showed his pictorial work in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions. Fernández, who has also written biographies of Mari Trini and Waldo de los Ríos, says that Aute's "has been the most difficult, because it is very complex to confront the figure of a man everyone speaks highly of, whom everyone loves. A man who never strayed from his ideas or his path. The versatile and consistent artist."
lavanguardia
%3Aformat(jpg)%3Aquality(99)%3Awatermark(f.elconfidencial.com%2Ffile%2Fbae%2Feea%2Ffde%2Fbaeeeafde1b3229287b0c008f7602058.png%2C0%2C275%2C1)%2Ff.elconfidencial.com%2Foriginal%2F13c%2F4a4%2F28e%2F13c4a428e1d773edbc00206c12d4e8fb.jpg&w=1280&q=100)
%3Aformat(jpg)%3Aquality(99)%3Awatermark(f.elconfidencial.com%2Ffile%2Fbae%2Feea%2Ffde%2Fbaeeeafde1b3229287b0c008f7602058.png%2C0%2C275%2C1)%2Ff.elconfidencial.com%2Foriginal%2F9a9%2F5c9%2F8de%2F9a95c98de70f95166847898c8f1f0636.jpg&w=1280&q=100)
