CARLOS LEÓN. Versos sueltos

Fernando Pradilla presents Versos sueltos (Loose Verses) the first solo show in the gallery of the artist Carlos León (Ceuta, 1948). The show takes the two spaces of the gallery, the street floor and the upper floor Espacio de Proyectos where the large scale paintings are installed. Versos sueltos, brings together the latest works of this renowned painter who since the sixties has a prominent place in the Spanish art scene.

A good connoisseur of the history of art, Carlos León has managed to achieve in his work a synthesis of classicism and modernity that gives him a unique place among contemporary painters. The constant exploration of new materials and the introduction, at the end of the nineties, of dibond and translucent polyester has given a special character to his painting.
There are two major themes that star most of his works: the landscape and carnality, and both are treated by him through an abstraction of clear evocative will, whose expressive strength is grounded in both their own life experiences as in collector dives in the fields of philosophy, literature and music. In the landscaping allusion Carlos León returns to childhood journeys, to traveling experiences and literary sources, and when he approaches the subject of the flesh his attention is directed to that expressive double register that moves in that inevitable proximity between the joyous sensuality and the experience of pain, between the touch of the caress and the taste of the tear inherent in all existential experience.

In the search for a beauty that is cultivated between the refined and the wild, between the rational and the enigmatic, resides that which gives the work of this artist that singularity that has been so unanimously recognized in recent decades.

Carlos León is the Prize of the Community of Madrid of Plastic Arts 2014 and the National Art and Patronage Prize of the La Caixa Foundation in 2016. His work is represented in a large number of public and private collections, including the collection of the National Museum Centro de Art Reina Sofía MNCARS; Fundación Suñol Collection, Barcelona; Bank of Spain Collection; Citibank Collection, Madrid; Collection Helga de Alvear Foundation, Cáceres; Museum of Fine Arts of Bilbao; Caja Madrid Collection; Patio Herreriano Museum of Contemporary Spanish Art, Valladolid and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Castilla y León, MUSAC.l

Carlos León's Solo Versos sueltos exhibition will be open to the public until March 17, 2018.