Antonio Rodríguez García, more popularly known as “Antón”, was born in Candás, on 16 February, 1911, into a humble family. He was the fifth of seven siblings.
He had an admirable disposition and dexterity for everything related to drawing and crafts from an early age.
After finishing primary school in 1924, he began to help his father with his construction work. Numerous drawings, paintings and sculptures are preserved from his childhood and adolescence.
Helped by the painter Evaristo Valle, he sourced financial support from the canning industrialist Alfonso Albo, allowing him to move to Madrid, where he settled in 1931 to start his artistic career at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts.
In 1933 he set up his own studio together with the Uruguayan painter Alejandro Metallo. In love with his land and particularly with his hometown, he alternated stays in the capital with time in Asturias.
In the summer of 1936, he was in Candás when he was surprised by the civil war. He was arrested and imprisoned in the Parish Church, where he saved a valuable Churrigueresque (Ultra Baroque) altarpiece from destruction.
He was subsequently transferred to a labour camp in Murias de Candamo, where he died in May 1937, when one of the guards shoots him without having received orders to do so.
There are two periods of interest from his short artistic career. The first runs from 1928 to 1930, a stage of self-taught training, where his work is fundamentally guided by his undeniable sculptural instinct and his innate artistic sensitivity.
The second period begins in 1931, when Antón moves to Madrid to begin his artistic training. It ends when he dies, in 1937, at the very young age of 26. During this phase he was very open to direct external influences, as we could expect from the training and information he was receiving.
