After spending his adolescence in Barcelona, Luis Fernández (Oviedo, 1900 – Paris, 1973) began his artistic career in Paris. In 1925 he joined the Purist movement of Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. In 1931 he became one of the founders of the Abstraction-Création group, with whom he collaborated with until 1934. In 1936 he moved toward Surrealism from geometric abstraction. Fernández participated in several collective exhibitions and in 1936 he collaborated with Picasso on the backdrop for 14 Juillet by Romain Rolland.

In 1937 he participated in the preservation of artistic heritage in Barcelona. Once the Spanish Civil War ended, he took part in several exhibitions in repudiation of Franco’s dictatorship. In the 1940s he moved away from Surrealism taking on Picasso’s influence and painting the heads of dead animals incorporating an expressive and dramatic language. He held his first individual exhibition in 1950 at Galèrie Pierre in Paris. He suffered a nervous breakdown in 1954 caused by the death of his wife. Afterwards his work centered on marine and animal subjects. In 1972, a year prior to his death, the Musée National d’Art Moderne organized a monographic exhibition of his work at the Rothschild Palace.