20th-21st Century Spanish

Arroyo settled in Paris in 1958, abandoning his earlier vocation as a journalist to fulfil his desire to become an artist. He went against the grain of the prevailing movement with a brand of painting imbued with critical and political content and a formal language that proved instrumental in the rise of in France. He collaborated with the painters Gilles Aillaud (1928-2005) and Antonio Recalcati (1938) in a number of projects that would become set an example for young realist artists in Spain. In 1963 he exhibited with the L’Abattoir collective at the 3^rd Young Painting Salon within the 3^rd Paris Biennale.

His expulsion from Spain in 1974 was reflected in his later work in a meditation on the social and psychological condition of his exile embodied in a number of emblematic characters (Robinson Crusoe, José María Blanco White, blind painters, chimney sweeps) developed across thematic series.

Apart from his writings on art, he has published a play titled Bantam, a biography of Panamá Al Brown; the novel Sardinas en Aceite; and his memoirs Minutas para un testamento. He also created stage designs for plays including La vida es sueño by Calderón de la Barca directed by José Luis Gómez in 1982, and the opera Tristan und Isolde with Klaus Grüber in 1999.

In 1982, he was awarded Spain’s National Visual Arts Prize, and in 2007 the National Graphic Art Prize. His works have been exhibited in major museums and art centres, including the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which organised a retrospective of his work in 1982. He is a Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France.