Angel Sevillano

ANGEL SEVILLANO ESTREMERA (Vigo, 1942–1994).
“Interior with Bread,” 1976.
Oil on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower right corner. Signed, dated, and titled on the reverse.
Measurements: 81 x 65 cm; 91 x 75 cm (frame).

Sevillano initially focused on landscape painting, employing a direct expressionist style in greens and blacks, before evolving toward a highly personal figurative style in which crowds play a central role in scenes of everyday life. His depictions of pilgrimages convey the naive charm of the people, with expectant and somewhat lost-in-thought gazes, featuring young women holding flowers in their hands, wearing multicolored clothing, and inhabiting dreamlike landscapes. A warm, lyrical palette and a poetic temperament permeate this artist’s work, which draws on Hispanic and indigenous American traditions to present an exotic typology set against backgrounds of gold and silver—as if he were borrowing the atmospheres of Eastern icons to idealize them in his own way. At times, vaguely influenced by Chagall, he presents us with levitating creatures, flying animals, and birds that take on human form, in settings where everything is weightless and seems to respond to a primitive fable recreated by Miguel Ángel Asturias. His still lifes, from an intermediate period, feature a highly orchestrated neutral color palette—earthy tones, ochres, and occasional blues—that evoke a simple yet profound emotion.

Ángel Sevillano’s artistic practice—his free reinterpretation of naïve and hedonistic painting—is beautifully expressed in this portrait of a girl with flowers. His father, a poet and journalist who was friends with painters, accustomed him from a very young age to spending time with artists, including Manuel Colmeiro, with whom he would maintain a lifelong friendship. He pursued higher studies in Fine Arts from 1962 to 1967 at the San Carlos Academy in Valencia and the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, on a scholarship from the Provincial Council of Pontevedra. Upon completing his studies, he was awarded a landscape painting scholarship to El Paular. He devoted himself to teaching, working as an art teacher at secondary schools in Vigo, Santiago, Sanxenxo, and Carril. For four years, he lived in Venezuela, a country he traveled extensively throughout, as well as other parts of South America, which influenced his conception of color and form. He did extensive work as an illustrator for the now-defunct newspaper *Arriba* and other media outlets. He began exhibiting at a very young age, in the early 1960s, in Vigo, and has since exhibited in numerous cities throughout Spain and South America. He has traveled throughout France and North Africa. His works are held in the museums of Vigo, Sada, A Coruña, and Pontevedra.