Patricio Cabrera studied Fine Arts at Seville University and moved to New York on a Fullbright Scholarship in 1988. He belongs to the generation of Sevillian artists – including Pepe Espaliú, Guillermo Paneque and Federico Guzmán – who exhibited at La Máquina Española Gallery in the 1980s and who revamped the artistic scene from different conceptual and style positions. His early work focused on figurative painting, with a style between the ornamental and decorative with a pop influence, drawing on an imaginary found in books, magazines, comics, newspaper reviews, photographs and films, as well as on his own trips and personal experiences. Cabrera combines abstract motifs, such as arabesques, which envelop, overlap or act as a thread for the figurative components of the scene in his paintings of recent decades. This distances the viewer from the real in enigmatic images that are symbolically charged and use brash yet harmonious colours.
Cabrera’s work has been a feature of the Spanish gallery scene since he took part in the Venice Biennale in 1986 and in leading group exhibitions such as ‘Espagne 87’ at the City of Paris Modern Art Museum (Paris, 1987); the travelling exhibition ‘Imágenes líricas. New Spanish Vision’ (1990-1992), which toured different centres in the USA; ‘A través del dibujo’ [Through Drawing] at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1995); and ‘Los excesos de la mente’ [The Excesses of the Mind], at the Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre (Sevilla, 2002). In 2016, an important retrospective of his work was held at the Seville Province Building.
Patricio Cabrera studied Fine Arts at Seville University and moved to New York on a Fullbright Scholarship in 1988. He belongs to the generation of Sevillian artists – including Pepe Espaliú, Guillermo Paneque and Federico Guzmán – who exhibited at La Máquina Española Gallery in the 1980s and who revamped the artistic scene from different conceptual and style positions. His early work focused on figurative painting, with a style between the ornamental and decorative with a pop influence, drawing on an imaginary found in books, magazines, comics, newspaper reviews, photographs and films, as well as on his own trips and personal experiences. Cabrera combines abstract motifs, such as arabesques, which envelop, overlap or act as a thread for the figurative components of the scene in his paintings of recent decades. This distances the viewer from the real in enigmatic images that are symbolically charged and use brash yet harmonious colours.
Cabrera’s work has been a feature of the Spanish gallery scene since he took part in the Venice Biennale in 1986 and in leading group exhibitions such as ‘Espagne 87’ at the City of Paris Modern Art Museum (Paris, 1987); the travelling exhibition ‘Imágenes líricas. New Spanish Vision’ (1990-1992), which toured different centres in the USA; ‘A través del dibujo’ [Through Drawing] at the Reina Sofía (Madrid, 1995); and ‘Los excesos de la mente’ [The Excesses of the Mind], at the Andalusian Contemporary Art Centre (Sevilla, 2002). In 2016, an important retrospective of his work was held at the Seville Province Building.