In 1978, Florentino Díaz, born in Cáceres, trained as an engraver at the Madrid Central School of Arts and Crafts, where he currently lives and works. Despite being essentially self-taught, his artistic language was marked by his attendance at the Current Art Workshops at the Madrid Círculo de Bellas Artes run by Albert Ràfols-Casamada, José Guerrero, Manolo Valdés, Hernández Pijuan and Antonio Saura. His time in different Germany cities including Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin consolidated the poetics of his pieces, which stand between sculpture and installation.

Deeply involved in the emotional and social agenda of his time, Díaz uses themes with a strong emotional engagement for the viewer, as could be seen in his involvement in the ‘Open for Works’ programme at the Matadero in Madrid (2015). For the occasions, Díaz installed a shack made out of rubble under constant rain. Inside the shack, he screened various videos with pictures of anonymous 20^th century lives, taken from albums he picked up at flea markets. The essence of the povera material shifts the attention of the viewer who, in Díaz’s work, draws on a direct and tremendously powerful, evocative and emotive iconography, encompassing acidic metaphors on the current situation of contemporary society. The constant central themes in his prolific output refer to the idea of belonging, to the concept of home and of the inhabited space (such as cities) in relation to the possibility or impossibility of coexisting in places that are constantly changing and ever more fluid.

Florentino Díaz has staged numerous solo shows. These include his exhibitions at the Espais Centre d’Art Contemporani de Girona (Girona, 1995); the Ibero-American Museum of Contemporary Art (Badajoz, 1997); the Cáceres Museum (2001); the Barjola Museum (Gijón, 2004); and the Caja de Burgos Art Centre (2007). Apart from his solo shows, Díaz has taken part in international exhibitions and fairs, such as Arco (Madrid, 1995-2008), Art Chicago’96, Art Cologne (Colonia, Germany, 2000), Zona Maco - Contemporary Art Mexico (Mexico City, 2010 & 2011), Doméstico 2000 (Madrid, 2000), Matadero (Madrid, 2015), the Busan Biennial (South Korea, 2002) or the Pamplona Visual Arts Biennial (1999).

Isabel Tejeda