Xaime Quesada

XAIME QUESADA (Orense, 1937-2007).
"Female portrait".
Pastel on card.
Signed in the lower right-hand corner.
Measurements: 63 x 58 cm; 89 x 72 cm (frame).
A painter from Ourense who has become one of the leading figures of his generation, following the tradition of a family and saga of artists - his father Xaime Quessada, Fernando and Carlos Quesada... - he signed his first exhibition at the age of 19. Spanish painter, engraver, set designer and artist. He entered the School of Fine Arts of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in 1946. He participated in Galicia in the artistic group O Volter and in Madrid in the so-called Grupo Acento. Since 1960 he has been intensely active in different exhibitions all over the world, settling in Paris in 1962, later moving to America and working in the 1980s for Unesco on the project for the polyglot version of Don Quixote. His works are transversally crossed by different artistic currents, from impressionism, abstract art, figurativism and expressionism. He was awarded the Gold Medal at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1959 and the Castelao Medal in 2004, among other prizes. His work can be found in different museums around the world, such as the Stuttgart Museum, the National Museum of Modern Art in Mexico, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, the Museum of Pobo Galego and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Havana. In the last years of his life Xaime Quesada Blanco starred in projects that already showed his potential and what he was called to develop throughout his professional career: the exhibition he signed in the Centro Cultural da Deputación de Ourense, in 2003, or his large-format proposals with industrial materials were part of his concerns at that time. The theme of motherhood and femininity was one of his favourites, always with an intimate and sensitive treatment, with the figures pretending to be wrapped in gauzes of memory.