Manuel Pesqueira

MANUEL PESQUEIRA (Paredela, Meis 1911- 1988).
"Peasant women".
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Size: 48 x 41 cm; 69 x 61 cm (frame).
Two women carry on their heads a big basket overflowing with fruits. We see them in profile, advancing firmly in front of a sown field. Their faces convey character. Their large hands and strong calves reveal the hardened life of the countryside.
The brushstroke is energetic, the line thick and an atmosphere of greys and blues envelops them with its careful composition and expressive power. As we can see in this suggestive painting, Manuel Pesqueira invented his own language with which to speak of his people, which is why he resorted to an archaism that is nevertheless fully modern.
Galician painter. While he was studying to become a teacher in Pontevedra he came into contact with Castelao and began to form part of the cultural and political environment of Galicia thanks to his participation in the newspaper A Nosa Terra, where he became the author of many of the articles published. It was in 1933 when he held his first exhibition entitled Paisajes humanos del rural de O Salnés. Years later, in 1950, after the Civil War, he exhibited in Vigo, Santiago de Compostela and Pontevedra and in 1951 in the Centro Galego in Buenos Aires. In 1960 he took part in the First Anthological Exhibition of Galician Painting, held at the Círculo de las Artes in Lugo. It was the collective exhibition at the Sala Quixote in Madrid in 1967 that led the critics in Madrid to call him the "most racially Galician painter". His wide national recognition meant that his painting was of interest to international art centres, which is why in 1984 he exhibited in Paris at the Centre International d'Art Contemporain, first in a group show and later as a solo artist.
His style is characterised by an intense primitivism in which sculpture is very present. In which the portraits acquire great monumentality. His paintings frequently allude to Galician tradition, showing different facets of the rural world from a pictorial perspective based on the avant-garde.