Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Estatua [Statue]

Image caption
FRANCISCO LEIRO

Estatua [Statue]

  • 1992
  • Carved wood, polyester, synthetic paint and light-bulbs
  • 225 x 129 x 47 cm
  • Cat. E_103
  • Acquired in 1993
By:
Beatriz Espejo

Statue (1992) is from a very special time in Leiro's life, following his move to New York in 1988. Other works from the same period along similar lines are Three Funny Men and Fire, Fire. All these works stand out for their irony and a certain tenderness. Leiro's sculptures are made by putting together various pieces of wood in combination with synthetic materials, polyester and, in this case, light-bulbs. He takes considerable liberties in his representations of the human body. It is as if he were harking back to his surrealist origins in order to explore post-humanist trends.

He draws inspiration from the patterns of his day-to-day life. He explores the physical gestures of the people that he sees around him and gives free rein to his laconic sense of humour, irony and exaggeration often to the point of surrealism. By contrast with his earlier sculptures, in which his figures were more languid and he seemed to celebrate the most ridiculous aspects of the human condition, here he takes a schematic approach, focusing on strength and valuing textures. As a close observer of the intimate, of the postures and nervous tics that characterise us, he explores what our reality actually is: an accumulation of small, innocent, deceitful, delicious, perverse fictions. This is why he strives to record gestures and to tell us things as if they had just happened.

Beatriz Espejo

 
By:
Beatriz Espejo
Francisco Leiro
Cambados (Pontevedra) 1957

Francisco Leiro is one of a group of artists who brought about a change of direction in Spanish art in the early 1980s. The euphoria that surrounded the return to democracy in Spain was manifested in an explosion of art in many forms from artists including Ferran García Sevilla, Juan Muñoz, Manolo Quejido, Susana Solano, Juan Uslé and Miquel Barceló. Leiro soon came to stand out in their company as an artist who was capable of bringing a new style to sculpture, using granite and wood to compose narrative works that were rooted in reality but leaned heavily on literary tradition and popular mythology.

His parents were craftspeople and he showed an early preference for sculpture. He was largely self-taught. His father and grandfather were cabinet-makers, and it was from them that he learned the rudiments of woodworking. From 1974 to 1976 he studied at the Arts and Crafts School in Santiago de Compostela, where he worked in stone. At around that time he joined with other artists to form a surrealist group called FOGA (Fato Ounirista Galego). His work first appeared in public in 1983, at the third and last Atlántica exhibition at the Pazo de Xelmírez estate in Santiago de Compostela. This led to his first solo show at the Montenegro Gallery in Madrid a year later, and to his inclusion in a major joint exhibition called En Tres Dimensiones ['In Three Dimensions'], which led to a boom in sculpture in Spain. In 1985 he represented Spain at the São Paulo Biennial. Since the late 1980s his style has remained clearly defined, with twisted figures and forced compositions, filled with drama and vitality, that are closely aligned with expressionism. Also in the late 1980s he began to obtain major public commissions for monumental sculptures in a number of cities, including Merman at the Puerta del Sol in Vigo (1991) and Astronaut in Valdemoro, Madrid (2001). In 1987 he moved to New York, where he still lives and works, though he also spends time at his workshop in Cambados.

Major exhibitions of his work include a retrospective at the Valencia Institute of Modern Art (Valencia, 2000) and the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 2000), an intervention at the Palacio de Cristal venue of the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2004) and an exhibition called Os traballos e os días de Francisco Leiro ['The Works and Times of Francisco Leiro’] at the ABANCA Obra Social venue (Santiago de Compostela, 2016).

Beatriz Espejo

 
«Francisco Leiro», Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea. CGAC (Santiago de Compostela, 2000). «Francisco Leiro», Institut Valencià d’Art Modern. IVAM (Valencia, 2000).
Vv.Aa. Leiro, Valencia & Santiago de Compostela, IVAM y CGAC, 2000. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.