Francisco Leiro

FRANCISCO LEIRO (Cambados, Pontevedra, 1957).
"Carrier", 1999.
Bronze, copy 5/6.
Signed.
Work certified by the artist.
Measurements: 39 x 54 x 15 cm.

Francisco Leiro's sculpture is characterized by an intense and very recognizable expressionist figuration, mainly focused on the human figure represented with twists, exaggerated gestures and a strong emotional charge. His works combine tradition and contemporaneity, with influences ranging from classical sculpture and baroque to expressionism and certain popular references. The result is powerful, symbolic and sometimes disturbing figures that convey a dramatic, ironic or allegorical vision of the human condition.

The sculpture in tender fully responds to Francisco Leiro's characteristic aesthetics; however, on this occasion the symbolic dimension acquires an added protagonism. "Carrier" -a Galician term that in Spanish means "transporter"- represents a character holding, suspended from a pole, two manacled figures hanging as if they were animals after slaughter.

"My sculptures are generally blind and deaf. I make human figures, but my formal interest is abstract: to give a form that interests me, that works, that has a balance or an imbalance or a volumetry that produces one sensation or another. To see my sculptures you don't have to look them in the eye, they are to be seen from all angles". This is how sculptor Francisco Leiro defines his sculptural creations. His figures often have no defined features or tend to schematic reduction, and yet his men and women carved in wood express subtle and intense emotions.

Leiro began his training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Santiago de Compostela, completing it at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid. He represented Spain in 1985 at the São Paulo Biennial. Since 1986 he has exhibited regularly at ARCO, Madrid. Established in New York in 1988, he began working for the Malbourough Gallery, one of the most prominent contemporary art galleries, a year later. Some of his public works include the figure of a fantastic animal known as Sireno (1991), erected on two green and black polished granite columns in Vigo's Puerta del Sol, a controversial symbol of the city, the Homenaje a Castelao, in the Alameda de Santiago de Compostela (1995), the Batea or Saavedra on the Lérez River in the Parque de la Isla de las Esculturas in Pontevedra, the Astronauta, Valdemoro (Madrid), Vértigo, on the M50 highway in Madrid (2004) and Simeón sentado, in front of Torre Espacio, Madrid. His works are also in collections and contemporary art museums.