About Antón Lamazares
Antón Lamazares (born 1954) is a Spanish painter, who is, along with José María Sicilia, Miquel Barceló and Víctor Mira, a member of the "generación de los 80". Working elaborate surfaces of wood and cardboard with varnish and other materials, he has created a very personal medium and artistic language. From an initially playful expressionism, his style has developed toward abstract expressionism and straightforward abstraction, and, more recently, a sort of minimalism in which an intimate dialogue between soul and memory, the spiritual and the sensual, poetry and dream-life can take place. His works have been exhibited throughout the world and are held by numerous important institutions, including the National Museum Reina Sofía, the Galician Centre for Contemporary Art, the Madrid Museum of Contemporary Art and the Marugame Hirai Museum of Japan, as well as by many private collectors and foundations. == Biography == === Early years: painting and poetry === (Galicia, 1954–1977) Lamazares was born on 2 January 1954 in Maceira, a village in Lalín (Pontevedra, Spain), whose rural environment left a deep impact on his imagery and creative process. Much of his early schooling (1963–1969) took place at the Franciscan seminary of Herbón where he devoted himself to the study of literature, mostly Latin and Greek classics. In the late 1960s he began writing poetry and developed friendships with the writer Álvaro Cunqueiro and the painters Laxeiro and Manuel Pesqueira, who would become formative influences. As his creative vocation began to shift from poetry toward painting, he undertook lengthy travels throughout Europe (1972) to study in person work by the masters he revered, including, Paul Klee, Rembrandt and Joan Miró, to whom would be added Antoni Tàpies, Manuel Millares, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, as well as Medieval art and the Art of Oceania. At the conclusion of his travels he stayed briefly in Barcelona, where he took a job as a construction worker, studying the works in its museums, particularly the collections of Romanesque art at the Marés Museum and the National Art Museum of Catalonia in his free time. In Madrid, where he next alighted, he resumed contact with his maestro, Laxeiro, and got to know the poet Carlos Oroza, whose friendship would remain essential for him: the dialogue between painting and poetry is a constant in all of his work.
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