For decades, Antonio López García has defamiliarized Madrid in his paintings, and in Antonio López García ´s Everyday Urban Worlds: A Philosophy of Painting, Benjamin Fraser defamiliarizes López ´s paintings. He looks, thinks, feels, and walks us through the artist’s seen-and-unseen Madrid in a journey that is in equal parts realistic and oneiric, and he does so with telling accuracy. López is eminently a painter of place, and Fraser takes us in and out of the frames in a constant movement between the canvas and its social surroundings. But he also shows us that López is just as eminently a painter of time, and he guides us to Madrid’s past and its historical and artistic links to the present. The result is an important contribution to the study of contemporary Madrid and its culture.

Edward Baker, author of Madrid Cosmopolita: La Gran Vía 1910-1936 and Materiales para escribir Madrid

Antonio López García’s Everyday Urban Worlds confirms Fraser’s growing reputation as the leading practitioner of cultural geography in the field of Hispanic studies. His look at three key López paintings begins as a critical stroll through a half century of life and literature in Spain’s capital city but quickly morphs into an often breathtaking tour de force analysis of cultural artifacts, historical detail, and spatial theory wherein the processes of the very urbanization of consciousness are laid bare. At the same time, by highlighting the dialogue of these paintings with not merely the city as object but with the rich complexity of urbanization as process, Fraser breathes new life into the López oeuvre, gifting the artist the critical attention he clearly merits.

Nathan Richardson, associate professor of Spanish and chair of the Department of Romance and Classical Studies, Bowling Green State University

Taking his cue from López García, a self-described tireless city stroller, Fraser expertly moves through vast expanses of urban time and space to peel back the layers of each locale’s discursive palimpsest, integrating commentary of well-known representations of Madrid created by the capital city’s most attentive observers (like authors Larra, Mesonero Romanos, Galdós, Martín Santos, and filmmakers Nieves Conde or Amenábar); histories of turn-of-the-century urban expansion, postwar speculation, immigration and neighborhood associations; and urban philosophy, especially the work of Henri Lefebvre. Fraser’s great achievement is to present the landscapes in López’s communiqués as a deeply human invitation for us to connect the lived spaces of the city with a greater understanding of our contemporary urban condition.

Francie Cate-Arries, professor of Spanish at the College of William and Mary