Antonio Machón, 1943-2022
Antonio Machón was a passionate advocate of contemporary art from an early age. He studied Fine Arts in Valencia and Madrid, began his career as a painter, and soon turned to promoting art in what would become his best-known role: that of a gallerist. In parallel, he researched children's drawing from his professorship at the University of Valladolid, and later at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
In 1973 he opened the Carmen Durango Gallery in Valladolid (named after his mother), where he presented exhibitions of the leading Spanish artists of the time, including Saura, Tàpies, Picasso, Chillida, Sempere, Miró, Guerrero, Gordillo, and others. At the same time, he published high-quality artists' books, often bringing together writers and painters in exceptional works: Jorge Guillén and Guerrero or Tàpies, José Hierro and Barjola, Jabès and Sempere, Valente and Saura, among others. All of them were bibliophile editions with unique formats.
In 1983 he moved to Madrid, now under the name Galería Antonio Machón. Located on Calle Conde de Xiquena, he continued with the same demanding rigor that had characterized his earlier period, exhibiting Saura, Tàpies, Oteiza, Barjola, Campano, Chillida, Gordillo, Guerrero, Guinovart, Bonifacio… and artists from subsequent generations such as Giralt, Teixidor, Pérez Villalta, Chema Cobo, Félix de la Concha, Antonio Rojas, Gerardo Delgado, Schlosser, Darío Basso, Carlos Franco, Garmendia, María Gómez, Grau, Lazkano, Patiño, Paloma Peláez, Reguera, Rodríguez Vigil, Juan Carlos Savater, Ángeles San José, Darío Villalba, and others.
In 1999 he was awarded the Gold Medal for Merit in the Fine Arts, an explicit recognition of his career and influence.
In 2010, affected by a growing series of health problems, he closed the gallery and limited his activity to the first floor of the same building, now operating as an art dealer without holding exhibitions. From that point onward, he focused primarily on his research into children's drawing and began publishing a series of books with Cátedra publishing house, and later through his own imprint, Editorial Fíbulas. These included his own works («Los dibujos de los niños» / «Children's Drawings», etc.) as well as books by other authors on the subject, such as Howard Gardner, Corrado Ricci, and Desmond Morris.
Throughout his life he demonstrated an unwavering commitment to excellence in his approach to the visual arts—whether contemporary art or children's drawing—showing an unbreakable dedication to quality and rigor, always at the highest level and without any concessions.
Antonio Machón passed away in 2022 after a series of health complications, which nevertheless did not prevent him from working until the very last moment on his archive of thousands of children's drawings or on his 20th-century art collection—a gathering of significant works assembled according to his consistently exacting standards.