Cobo studied philosophy and letters at the Autonomous University in Madrid (1970-1974). In 1975 his work was shown at the Buades Gallery in Madrid, and he went on to become a central figure in the group of painters behind the 'new Madrid figuration'. In 1980, he moved to the United States, where he came in contact with the transavantgarde and neo-expressionism. Cobo's uniqueness lies in the combination of two tendencies: conceptual art, playing with the nature of representation; and figurative painting, which plays with the subject represented. In his early work from the 1970s, he took a playful approach to painting. In the 1980s, he used the rhetoric of 'the sublime' and baroque allegory, theatrically staging the relationship between culture and memory.

In the early 1990s, a joker  acted as a master of ceremonies, presenting the work in a way that was somewhat reminiscent of Max Ernst's Loplop, revealing the artifice of the paintings. The incorporation of words enables Cobo to go one step further, contrasting the verbal elements with the visual ones. He currently focuses on the crisis in both the image and its representation.

Throughout his long artistic career he has received many important scholarships and grants, such as those awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture (1979), the Juan March Foundation (1980) and the Hispano-North American Committee as artist in residence at PS1 MoMA (New York, 1981-1982). In 1994 he received the Andalusia Prize for Plastic Arts, and in 1998 the newly-inaugurated Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art in Seville devoted a solo exhibition to him. His work has received widespread acclaim on the international stage since the 1980s, with some important solo shows at venues such as the Kunstmuseum Bern (1986); the Mezzanine Gallery of the Metropolitan Museum (New York, 1987) and the Malaga Contemporary Art Centre (2009).

Roberto Díaz