Pedro Moreno Heyerhoff

PEDRO MORENO MEYERHOFF (Barcelona, 1954).
"Santa with Matisse in my studio", 1980.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed, dated and titled in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 74 x 55 cm; 91 x 71 cm (frame).

Victoria Combalía has described Pedro Moreno Meyerhoff as the "Catalan Antonio López", due to his precise, meticulous, hyperrealist technique, although not exempt of poetics and expressiveness. The artist was largely self-taught, and began to devote himself to painting as a result of a depression, as a therapy. Finding himself unable to write, he decided to painstakingly portray the world around him, from the tiniest insect to the faces of friends and acquaintances. In this way the artist tried to extract the essence of reality in order to apprehend it, to make it his own, to understand it. In addition to this interest in realist painting as a way of understanding the world and, at the same time, of projecting himself into it, his admiration for some of the main creators in the history of art also influenced his firm commitment to figurative painting. The fascination for artists such as the Renaissance Fra Angelico, with his delicate atmospheres full of peace and spirituality, realistic and at the same time transcendent, or the Flemish Jan Van Eyck, who revolutionized oil painting in the 15th century with his ability to translate the real world onto a flat surface, encouraged the artist to delve deeper into the capture of light, color and atmosphere. During the last years of his career the painter has moved away from absolute realism to introduce a more personal, lyrical and expressive nuance in his works, but he has continued to be fascinated by the tangible world, by what is material, physical, and, at the same time, therefore, fleeting.