Antón Lamazares

One of the current Galician painters with greatest international projection, Antón Lamazares developed his work from playful expressionism in the eighties towards informalism and abstraction, and he even borders on minimalism in its most recent phase. Making his paintings on humble materials such as wood and cardboard, he creates his own language based on experimentation with varnishes and other materials.

The 1980s were a period of intense work for Lamazares and the time when he first made a major impact. His paintings project figures in an expressionist line, with intense chromaticism and powerful originality. In the words of the artist, the painter's mission is "to embody the mystery of life in such a way that the painting is a table of knowledge for man." Thus, his painting speaks of spirituality, emotion, nature, territory, life and death.

"Antón Lamazares has always manifested a brutalist penchant for matter and gesture. I'm going to put it this way: ‘innocent’, which is not exactly the same as ‘spontaneous’,” said art historian Francisco Calvo Serraller in 2007. 

“Lamazares is, it must not be forgotten, a mentally and technically very complex artist. He can, for example, use ordinary cardboard as a painting support, but, in his hands, well pressed and varnished, it takes on the luster of plastered wood. His ‘scribbles’, which mimic childhood doodles or the rudimentary schematism of self-taught artists, are impregnated, whatever the figurative motif, with subtle refinements," wrote Calvo.

His works are exhibited in cities on different continents, and are present in the collections of major art centres, such as the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Galician Centre of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, the Marugame Hirai in Japan and the National Gallery of Jordan, as well as in numerous foundations and private collections. He has been distinguished on numerous occasions for his artistic career, and in May 2010 was awarded the Golden Shield by the University of Santiago de Compostela.