Antón Pantiño

ANTÓN PATIÑO (Monforte de Lemos, Lugo, 1957).
Untitled, 1984.
Mixed media on canvas.
Presents on the back labels of Buades Gallery (Madrid) and Lucas Palacios Gallery (Madrid).
Signed in the lower right corner. Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 195 x 96,5 cm.
During the eighties Patiño consolidated a plastic language marked by the expressive intensity, the formal fragmentation and the recovery of symbolic imaginaries. Framed in the context of artistic renovation in post-Franco Spain, and in dialogue with the activity of the Atlántica collective. The composition presents a hybrid and fragmented figure, with totemic or ritual resonances, constructed by means of a gestural and energetic drawing that decomposes the body into autonomous planes.
From the chromatic point of view, the use of a vibrant turquoise background on which dense blacks, fiery reds and acid yellows contrast. This palette, applied with a direct and material brushstroke, emphasizes the physicality of the pictorial gesture, in tune with the approaches of Neo-Expressionism and Abstract Expressionism. Likewise, influences of primitive aesthetics and African or Iberian art can be traced, visible in the frontality of the face and in the simplification of the features, as well as echoes of artists who explore the figure from an expressive and symbolic perspective. In this sense, the work is situated in an intermediate territory between figuration and abstraction, where the image is not defined by its representational fidelity, but by its capacity to evoke emotional and cultural states.
A visual artist and writer, Antón Patiño made his debut in 1974, the year in which he held two solo exhibitions: Ceibe gallery in A Coruña and Centro Lucense in Buenos Aires. Since then he has exhibited individually in galleries and museums in Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, the United States, France, Sweden and Germany, in outstanding galleries such as Buades in Madrid, Diem & Partner in Zurich, Aline Vidal in Paris, Bruno Fachetty in New York and Clauss & Palacios in Stuttgart. He has also participated in important collective exhibitions and fairs held in other European countries, Latin America and Asia. He has published several books since 1992, and is represented in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporáneo, the MEIAC in Badajoz, the MACBA in Barcelona and the Artium in Vitoria, among other public and private collections.