Luis Feito was born on October 13, 1929, Madrid, Spain.
Luis Feito moved to Paris in 1956, after completing his studies at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts, an institution where he was also a professor.
Although he lived in Paris during this period, Luis Feito remained in contact with Spanish avant-garde artists. He was a founding member of the Madrid group El Paso (1957-60), which defended innovative and anti-academic art with moral and social responsibility. The premises of this collective were based on the desire to give a new spiritual aspect to Spanish art, particularly important in the aftermath of the devastating Civil War.
His early paintings incorporate figurative elements, but from the 1950s and 1960s onwards, his painting reflects an interest in lyrical abstraction. The use of color, combined with the overlapping of smooth surfaces that contrast with the use of large amounts of impasto material, including sand, are characteristic of his work during this period. Luis Feito, gradually adopts a greater formal simplicity from the 1960s onwards, reduces the use of impasto material and incorporates circular elements in the composition, reflecting his interest in Japanese art.
Among the many important exhibitions in which he has participated, we note his presence at the Venice Biennale (1956, 1958, 1960, 1968), São Paulo Biennale (1957, 1963), Documenta Kassel (1959), Paris Biennale (1959), Guggenheim Museum (1960), Tate Gallery, London (1962). Among the many retrospectives of his work, we highlight the Galerie Arnaud, Paris (1961), the Hamburg Museum (1964), the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (1968) and the Reina Sofia National Museum (1998).
Luis Feito left Paris for Montreal in 1981 and later (1983) moved to New York where he stayed until the early 1990s. He currently lives in Madrid.