Santiago Carbonell Gallery

Ecuadorian Artist, Gallery, Paintings, Realism

Santiago Carbonell Painting

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Santiago Carbonell Painting

Santiago Carbonell: “Often when I see my image reflected in the mirror, I do not recognize myself, I imagine that I have emerged from a mysterious twist, as from a strange affair. I will always be the son of my grandfather shoemaker and of a box of watercolors.”

Realist and visionary painter Santiago Carbonell was born in 1960 in Quito, Ecuador with Spanish nationality. He emigrated to Mexico in 1986 where he married María Gabriela. He is the father of four Mexican children and currently resides in the city of Querétaro, Mexico.

Carbonell began to paint at the age of 6 and during his youth he lived in Ecuador, Spain, the united states and Italy, to later arrive in Mexico. His iron discipline, tenacious study and refined self-taught talent, has led him to travel the world, surprising the viewer with a personal perception of painting. He is a prominent representative of the hyper-realistic current, although – according to himself – his aesthetics is not based on reproducing what reality or photography represent, but on inventing from them. Some of the awards he has obtained are: 1982, from the Catalan American institute of cooperation and in 1980 the Reina Sofía scholarship for fine arts.

Santiago Carbonell’s Paintings

Carbonell studied painting in Barcelona and was part of a group of young painters influenced by Informalism. Tàpies was an influential figure for him.

Tachism and working with different materials, accidents, chance, and texture are all highly influential in his works. Carbonell likes to experiment and is influenced by the avant-garde. His own work is realistic in nature and combines elements of romanticism and minimalism.

Carbonell feels that being an artist is not inherited and that the environment that one grows up in is more important than one’s genes. His father loved art and took him to museums when he was a young boy. As a child, he learned from his parents a passion for music and literature.

He claims that the love that parents had for the arts and imparted to him was much more important than any inherited gene. His paintings cover a broad spectrum of subjects. He prefers to use dancers as his models because they know how to move and are comfortable with their bodies. He captures this sensuality in his paintings.

In his paintings, we recognize ourselves, our frailties, and our dreams. He is paints slowly and his paintings sell well. He currently lives in Mexico with his wife and children and teaches art in Querétaro, Mexico in the university.

More About Santiago Carbonell

Ecuadorian Artist Santiago Carbonell Painting

There are also trends that lead to heated disputes, as is the case of what i would call traditional contemporary pictorial realism; pictorial trend sustained in the recycled style of painting running between the renaissance and the nineteenth-century realism, including neoclassicism and romanticism.

Faithful to the tradition that leads, in turn, marked differences, neither the technical nor the images or the spirit that animates or purposes are equivalent.

Note also that contemporary realism incorporates, determinedly, proposals have emerged in the field of photography (in the case of Santiago Carbonell, photography after offering their services and provide us with certain image, it becomes deconstructed by procedures purely pictorial showing precisely the difference between photography and painting).

Examine the potential of the faithful picture availing itself to this, the work of Santiago Carbonell.

Let us start from indisputable evidence:

A realist is the one who is responsible to see deeply and see others do, that is, to see what can not be seen immediately because additional artistic demands distract attention. Think that reality comprised of art is not the reality as it is, if it were art would be useless, superfluous duplicate.

This means that the painter has to distance himself from the reality captured by the naked eye, then his task is to transfigure, to redeem those beings and things of mistreatment and indifference that are condemned in the instrumental-commercial-utilitarian world.

Painting, making art requires the given form and rebuild what has aesthetic.

To achieve this requires certain craft to combine the ability to see the background of reality, already deeply involved in the practice of painting, just have a few primary elements: brushes, spatula, colors, oil paints, fabrics and mood ready to build something in itself exceptional: the creative act.

The look that pierces the backgrounds of the world is acquired through hard learning of that language in which the radical perception has been shaped essentially, i mean the history of painting: design, iconography, techniques, modes of composition, relationships between drawing and color.

Santiago Carbonell assumes that initiatory experience, and it is his vision. Changing vision, of course. Hard, dry, secular painting. We could talk about realism because Santiago Carbonell no idealized, exaggerated or twisted: just captures the real. For him everything counts equally, no hierarchy.

The painter leaves his gaze wander among the usual corners and small objects, and recognizes their dignity. Capture of tiny details using a traditional tight and accurate drawing, showing the work of artist faith in the things of the real world, its shades, its forms, its presence.

In fidelity to their membership of the here and now circumstantial, still life’s and portraits in his paintings coexist without difficulty. Santiago Carbonell paints with the thoroughness of the artisan, and as apprentice of reality.

What he gets is no little: the domain of natural painting, picking out the gifts offered up by the world that have specific and individual inclusive; reconstructs and brings to an irrevocable forms correctly.

Dissatisfied with the painter achieved goes a step further, delves into the illusion, the trompe l’oeil effect, trying to catch what he titled illusion of reality.

The illusion disconcerting: characters and stuff now inhabit strange and unexpected spaces. Realism becomes suprareal without being surreal and certainly Dali’s influence is obvious.

But careful! Carbonell does not like the symbolic, thus his starting naturalism as his suprareal bet comply with the sap of the world, hence his obsessions and optical effects are supported by an old bucket, a jug, a cigar, a glass of wine, a balloon … Objects that do not cease to be and coexisting with self-absorbed monks or chaste and unchaste nudes.

The trompe l’oeil is thus not an action for disdain the world but a contraption to draw attention to the insignificant, that is, about what, so present and near, have stopped watching. (source: by Jorge Juanes, in the book “Santiago Carbonell”).

Via Inverarteartgallery.Com

Individual Exhibitions

Mirrors Of Reality 2016
Museum Of Art Of The Ministry Of Finance And Public Credit, Mexico City
Guanajuato Center For The Arts, Guanajuato, Mexico
Museum Of The Joaquín Arcadio Pagaza Cultural Center, Valle De Bravo, Mexico
Santiago Carbonell Museum 2014
Inauguration Of The Foundation Museum, Querétaro, Mexico
Untitled, By Santiago Carbonell 2013
Alfredo Ginocchio Gallery, Mexico City
Archeology Of The Gaze 2013
Museo Casa Diego Rivera De Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico
From Beauty To Disenchantment 2012
Museum Of Oaxacan Painters (Mupo), Oaxaca, Mexico
From Beauty To Disenchantment 2011
University Complex · Meritorious Autonomous University Of Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
Querétaro Museum Of Art, Queretaro, Mexico
2010
- Museum Of Fine Arts, Toluca, State Of Mexico
- Gallery Guy Peters, Saint Paul De Vence, France
- Pinta, London, England
- Pinta, New York, USA
- Commemorative Mural Of The Bicentennial Of The Independence Of Mexico And Centennial Of The Mexican Revolution 2009/2010
- Supreme Court Of Justice Of The Nation, Mexico City
2009
- Arteamericas, Miami, Florida, USA
- Fia, Caracas, Venezuela
- Pinta, New York, USA
- Scope, Miami, USA
- Arteamericas
2008
- Miami, Usa
- Bridge Art Fair, Chicago, Usa
- Pinta, New York, Usa
- Artbo, Bogotá, Colombia
- Sibyls 2008
- Metropolitan Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2007
- Sibyls
- Borda Garden Museum, Cuernavaca, Mexico
- Museum Of The Arts Of The University Of Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
2006
- Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, Usa
2005
- Museum Of Contemporary Art Of Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes, Mexico
  Regional Museum Of Querétaro, Inah, Querétaro, Mexico
2003
- Art. Miami, Florida, Usa
- Metropolitan Museum Of Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
- Contemporary Art University Gallery, Autonomous University Of Querétaro, Querétaro, Mexico
- University Cultural Center, San Nicolás De Hidalgo University, Morelia, Mexico
- Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
2002
- House Of Culture San Luis Potosí, Slp, Mexico
- Museum Of The People, Guanajuato, Mexico
- Private Collection 2001 – Permanent Room
- Querétaro Museum Of Art, Querétaro, Mexico
2000
- Fiac, Caracas, Venezuela
- Praxis, Lima, Peru
1999
- Miami International Art Exhibition´99, Miami, Usa
1998
- Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
- Palm Beach International Art Fair´98, Miami, Usa
- Ibero-American Art Fair, Caracas, Venezuela
1997
- Praxis Int.Art, New York, Usa
- Ibero-American Art Fair, Caracas, Venezuela
- Nineteen Ninety Six
- University Gallery Of Contemporary Art, Autonomous University Of Querétaro, Querétaro, Mexico.
- Miami International Art Exhibition´96, Miami, Usa
- Nineteen Ninety Five
- Praxis, Arte Int., Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Casa Lamm, Mexico City, Mexico
1994
- Museum Of The City Of Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico
- Latin American Art Fair, Brussels, Belgium
- Arafi 94, Miami, Usa
- Miami International Art Exhibition´94, Miami, Usa
1993
- Miami International Art Exhibition´93, Miami, Usa
1992
- Praxis Art Int., Mexico
- Museum Of Modern Art, Querétaro, Mexico
- Miami International Art Exhibition´92, Miami, Usa
1988
- Misrachi Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico
1986
- Dulose Rein Galleries, Houston, Usa
1985
- Sosa Nesle Gallery, Quito, Ecuador
- Spanish Center, Quito, Ecuador
- Collective Exhibitions
1998
- University Gallery Of Contemporary Art, Querétaro, Mexico
- Miami International Art Exhibition´98, Miami, Usa
1997
- Salon Bancomer, Mexico City, Mexico
- Monterrey Museum, Monterrey, Mexico
- Amot Museum, New York, Usa
- Ibero-American Art Fair ’97, Caracas, Venezuela
- Nineteen Ninety Six
- Salon Bancomer, Mexico City, Mexico
- Nineteen Ninety Five
- Miami International Art Exhibition´95, Miami, Usa
1994
- Texas Art Fair, Dallas, Usa
1993
- Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
1992
- Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
- 1991
  Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
  Qualli Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico
1990
- Museum Of Modern Art, Querétaro, Mexico
1989
- Praxis Arte Int., Mexico City, Mexico
1987
- Misrachi Gallery, Mexico City, Mexico
1986
- Fifth Ibero-American Biennial Of Painting, Mexico City, Mexico
- International Engraving Biennial, Lima, Peru
- Dubois-Rein Galleries, Houston, Usa
1985
- Colectiva La Caixa, Barccelona, Spain
- Green Manzana Gallery, Guayaquil, Ecuador
  1983
Collective Galena College Of Architects, Quito, Ecuador

Publications

2011: Arte Al Día, Mexico. Text: Roberto González «From Beauty To Disenchantment»
2009: The Painting Of Santiago Carbonell In Contemporary Realism. Text: Andrea Avedaño Macedo. Master’s Thesis, Faculty Of Fine Arts, Uaq
2006: Book Santiago Carbonell, Painting. Texts: Ignacio Padilla, Roberto González, Teresa Del Conde, José Manuel Springer And Carol Demian. Impresiones Aéreas Sa
2001: Carbonell Book. Text: Jorge Juanes. Impresiones Aéreas Sa
2000:
- Destination And Encounter, Querétaro. Santiago Carbonell, The Language Of The Brush. Text: Andrea Avedaño.
- Tips, Aeromexico. Santiago Carbonell, I Always Have My Suitcase Ready To Travel Text: José Luis Solana.
- Scale, Aeromexico. Santiago Carbonell, A Lyrical Painting. Text: Minerva Vació.
- El Comercio, Lima. Santiago Carbonell, Real Women. Text: José Gabriel Chueca.
- Opinion The Republic, Peru. Santiago Carbonell, Painting Is A Mirror. Text: Pedro Escribano.
1999:
- Latin American Art, Year19, No.74, Arte Al Día, Buenos Aires Argentina. Santiago Carbonell, Simulacros And Alegonas. Text: Fermin Feure.
- Art Nexus, No.31. The Nexus Between Latin American And The Rest Of The World, Santiago Carbonell. Art Miami 99.
- Latin American Art Directory Arte Al Día 3rd Edition. Latin American Art Directory.
1998:
- International House And Style, A Or Iii, No.13. Santiago Carbonell, Emotion In Painting.
- Art International Ny
- Art Miami. Modern Contemporary Art Projects, Santiago Carbonell.
- Here We Chose To Live, Mexico, Vol.1. Ministry Of The Interior.
1997:
- Fia 97. Ibero-American Art Fair Vi Edition, Santiago Carbonell.
- Art News 2000. Volume 96, No.7. Top 2000 Collectors, Santiago Carbonell.
- Nineteen Ninety Six
- Images Of Latin American Art. Art A Day, Ao.16, No.58. Santiago Carbonell, Exhibition In Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- Self-Portrait In Mexico In The 1990s Arabi, José Juan Tablada Room, Museum Of Modern Art.

Santiago Carbonell Website

Santiago Carbonell Painting