Carlos Franco

CARLOS FRANCO (Madrid, 1951).
"Relationships I", 1998.
Mixed media and collage on cardboard.
Signed and dated in the right corner.
Measurements: 64,5 x 50 cm; 73 x 58,5 cm (frame).

Painter ascribed to the new Madrid figuration of the seventies, Carlos Franco develops a language of symbolic images, taken from classical mythology or the unconscious, also characterized by the juxtaposition of images and the voluptuousness of color, which derives in his recent work in the investigation of supports and pictorial techniques. He made his individual debut in 1971, at the Sala Doncel in Pamplona, and the following year he presented his work in Madrid, at the Amadís gallery. In the following years he alternated his personal exhibitions with illustration and occasional decorative works. Also, in 1989 he won the Madrid City Hall competition for the mural decoration of the facade of the Real Casa de la Panadería in the Plaza Mayor. After two decades of solo exhibitions in prominent galleries in Spain, mainly in Madrid, he will be presented abroad in 1999, with a personal exhibition held at the MDA gallery in Helsingborg (Sweden). Since then he has combined his exhibitions in Spain with others outside our borders, in Brazil, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Panama, in such outstanding centers as the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba (Brazil). Since 2003 he has been exhibiting at the Marlborough Gallery in Madrid (later he will also exhibit in New York), and in 2007 the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía organized an exhibition of his graphic work which was held at the Monasterio de Silos (Burgos). In recent years he has also taken part in important group exhibitions and fairs in Spain, the United States, Germany and Monaco. Carlos Franco is currently represented in the MNCARS, the MEAC, the Museo de Vitoria, the Municipal de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid, the Instituto de Empresa and the Instituto de Crédito Oficial, the Fundación Mapfre and in the Testimoni collections of La Caixa, Banco Hipotecario, Amigos del Arte Contemporáneo, Tándem DDM, Banco Europeo de Inversiones, Loewe Hnos, Argentaria and the International Olympic Committee, among others.