Madrid – The singer-songwriter and painter Luis Eduardo Aute, 76, died this Saturday in Madrid, sources from his family environment informed Efe.
Aute has been retired from the stage since he suffered a serious heart attack in 2016, which kept him in a coma for two months.
After several stays in hospitals, including a Cuban one, Aute remained at home, cared for by his family.
He stood out for being an intellectual in his facets as a musician, singer-songwriter, film director, cartoonist, painter and writer with a work of great level and maximum independence.
He was a multifaceted creator and author of songs that are part of the heritage of the Spanish author song, in which he stood out along with figures such as Joan Manuel Serrat, Joaquín Sabina or Paco Ibáñez.
Born in Manila (Philippines) on September 13, 1943, at the age of eleven he moved to Madrid. He married in 1968 with Marichu Rosado, the marriage had three children.
He started out musically as a guitarist for the groups “Los Tigres”, “Los Pekeniques” and “Los Sonor”, until, at the age of 17, he debuted as a singer-songwriter on the Spanish Television (TVE) program “Salto a la fama”.
Although his pictorial facet is less well known, he also developed it very early and in 1960 he exhibited his paintings for the first time at the Alcón Gallery in Madrid.
Their first album was titled “Dialogues of Rodrigo and Jimena” and included songs like “Rosas en el mar” and “Aleluya nº1”, which Massiel had previously made popular.
In 1968 he released “24 short songs” and during the 1970s he recorded seven albums. “Rito” (1973) was followed by “Espuma” (1974), “Babel” (1975) and “Forgesound” (1976), with themes written by Jesús Munárriz and the collaboration of Forges, Rosa León and Teddy Bautista. “Sarcófago “(1977) closed the trilogy of love and death, along with” Rito “and” Espuma “; and later came “Albanta” (1978) and “Par a par” (1979). “Albalanta” was a turning point in his career and included the famous “Al alba” that Aute had composed years before inspired by the latest Francoist executions.
The first to sing it was Rosa León, who dedicated it in her concerts to those condemned to death. Her production of the 80s was reflected in the works “Alma” (1980), the last of the trilogy about love and life, together with “Albanta “and” Wide “; “Fugue” (1982); and the double “Entre amigos” (1983), which was the National Disco Award.
“Body to Body” (1984) followed; “Nudo” (1985), the last of the trilogy of songs of love and madness (with “Fuga” and “Carne a cuerpo”); the double “20 love songs and a desperate poem” (1986); the double “Temple” (1987) and “Seconds out” (1989). In the 90’s “Ufff!” (1991), the Golden Record “Slowly” (1992), the double performed on a tour with Silvio Rodríguez “Mano a mano” (1993), “Animal Uno” (1995), “Alevosía” (1995) and double “Air / Invisible” (1998).
With the turn of the century he published “Alas y balas” (2002) and the following year he began a new recording of all his songs, of which three double volumes have been edited so far under the title “Autorretratos” (Sony).
In March 2007 he released the album “A día de hoy”, with unpublished songs and two years later he released “Memorable cuerpo”, a compilation of the best songs from his four decades as a musician.
In 2010 he released “Intemperie”, again with unpublished songs, and two years later, “The boy who looked at the sea”, an album with twelve new songs that was accompanied by a DVD with the movie “The boy and the basilisk”, Drawn and made by the author himself from a photograph of his childhood. That same year he collaborated with María Dolores Pradera on his album “Gracias a ye”, performing as a duo the bolero “Caminemos”.
In his plastic facet Aute is the author of a voluminous figurative production, especially pictorial but also sculptural.
In 1974, he received the first prize for painting at the Mostra Fondazione Michetti, in Italy. In 1983, the Kreisler-2 room hosted some twenty large-format paintings on couple conflicts, grouped under the title “Passion”, and in 1986 he presented a sample of religious iconography, part of which he included the following year in his double album “Temple”.
Some of his works have traveled to international fairs such as the Paris Biennale (1964), the Sao Paolo Biennale (67), or ARCO in various editions, and more recently, between 2004 and 2010, he made a traveling retrospective exhibition entitled “Transfiguraciones” took his work throughout Spain and some Latin American countries.
As for cinema, already in the 1960s he left his university studies after fifteen days to go to Paris, where he was credited to the assistant director of the Joseph L. Mankiewicz film “Cleopatra” (1963) and also to Jean Luc Goddard and Luis Malle, among others. Aute is the author of several shorts and the animated feature film “A Dog Called Pain”, nominated for the Goya in 2002 and selected at festivals such as San Sebastián, Valladolid and Havana.
He also composed soundtracks for films by Jaime Chávarri, Luis García Berlanga and Fernando Fernán Gómez, among others. As a poet he has published fifteen books, the first “La mathematica del mirror” (1975), which was followed by “Canciones y poemas” (1976); “Liturgy of Disorder” (1978); “Songs” (1980); and “Luis Eduardo Aute, body of crime” (1999). In “Body of crime” (2004), he brought together for the first time the lyrics of his 300 compositions and ten years later he updated it – the figure already reached 400 – in “Claroscuros and other pentimientos. “” AnimaLhada “(2005) brings together the books” AnimaLuno “,” AnimaLdos “and” AnimaL3D “, a series that he later completed with” AnimaLhito “(2007); and last March “The sixth animal” (Espasa) saw the light, with more than 250 poems and pieces divided by chapters that review its trajectory from its birth.
In 2015 a new generation of musicians -Xoel López, Leiva, Depedro, Rubén Pozo, Soleá Morente, among others- dedicated the tribute album “Giralunas” to him in which they covered their most famous songs.
The following year and to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his first studio recording, he organized the “La Gira Luna” tour, which started with a recital at the National Auditorium of Mexico and led him to tour Spain with 15 concerts, one of them on June 21 in Madrid within the framework of a solidarity initiative to help refugees.
On August 8, 2016, he suffered a heart attack and was in a coma for 48 days. He recovered slowly and in 2018 his classmates gave him a tribute concert.
ORTwenty artists, including Joaquín Sabina, Joan Manuel Serrat, Silvio Rodríguez and Ana Belén, came together on a “historic” night to send encouragement to the most human “animal”.
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