Francisco Leiro

Francisco Leiro (Cambados, Pontevedra, 1957). The son of a quarryman, he began as a self-taught sculptor, influenced by popular Galician imagery. Later, he moved to Santiago de Compostela to learn about working with stone at the Arts and Crafts School. After three years of studying in Santiago he went to Madrid, where he attended drawing and modelling classes at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. He presented his first exhibition at the Cultural Society in Cambados in 1975. During that period he was a member of the Foga group, his sculpture showed an increased Surrealist influence, and he appeared in various group and solo exhibitions. In the early eighties he took part in the Atlántica group exhibitions, which brought together an emerging generation of artists who revitalised the plastic arts in Galicia in the eighties. After exhibiting in Italy and France, in 1990 he presented his work at the Marlborough Gallery in New York, where he had been living since 1988. Further exhibitions of his work were held at the same gallery in 1992 and 1998. In the late eighties he began developing the monumental facet of his sculpture and carried out various public commissions in Santander, Vigo, Ferrol and Santiago de Compostela. Leiro’s unmistakable style has gone through various periods but has always obeyed an expressionistic figuration. The basic reference-points for his style continue to be traditional Galician sculpture in the form of wood-carving and ancient varieties of sculpture. His works incorporate the hieratic spirit of Egypt and Mesopotamia, the grandeur of Michaelangelo, and elements of German Expressionism. His sculpture juxtaposes figurative forms with abstract structures which give rise to pieces with allegorical connotations whose narrative references lie beyond history and memory, invoking an ironic, timeless fiction. Although he has used stone, marble or concrete for many of his carvings, he generally tends to use wood (peira, maceire, ukola or teak), since it is a material that easily allows compositional distortion and offers an especially expressive quality, for which he makes use of deep, incisive carving, sometimes summary and sometimes brutalist. He has investigated the expressive qualities of contrasts of materials (polychrome wood, vinyl, polyester). The result is a gallery of human figures with strongly drawn lines, altered forms and exaggerated movement. To heighten the effect he uses a polychrome technique that ingeniously connects colour and form. In contrast to the stillness that dominated the space of his earlier works, in his more recent pieces there is an increase in sensuality and movement. The exhibition presents about 40 sculptures which offer a retrospective view of the creative evolution of this sculptor from 1987 to the present day. The catalogue that accompanies the exhibition contains reproductions of the works exhibited and includes texts by Santiago B. Olmo and the curator, Miguel Fernández-Cid. This exhibition has been organised jointly by the Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea-CGAC and the IVAM-Institut Valencià d’Art Modern.