Carlos Franco

CARLOS FRANCO (Madrid, 1951).
"Children breastfeeding", 1996.
Mixed media on cardboard adhered to board.
Signed and dated.
With label and stamp of the Miguel Marcos Gallery, Barcelona, on the back.
Measurements: 74 x 109 cm; 77,5 x 113 cm (frame).

In this work of "Niños amamantándose", Carlos Franco uses a brown cardboard as a support, which provides a warm and earthy background that frames the composition. The scene shows two small children, with dynamic strokes, suckling a barely defined animal, which blends in among the human figures. The painting explores the primitive and the maternal in a symbiosis between the human and the animal, taking as a reference the Roman myth of Romulus and Remus.

Carlos Franco was born in Madrid in 1951. Painter ascribed to the new Madrid figuration of the seventies. He develops a language of symbolic images, taken from classical mythology or the unconscious, also characterized by the juxtaposition of images and the voluptuousness of color, which derives in his recent work in the investigation of supports and pictorial techniques. He made his individual debut in 1971, at the Sala Doncel in Pamplona, and the following year his work could be seen in Madrid, at the Sala Amadís. In the following years he alternated his personal exhibitions with illustration and occasional decorative works. Also, in 1989 he won the Madrid City Hall competition for the mural decoration of the facade of the Real Casa de la Panadería in the Plaza Mayor. In 1998 he joined the Miguel Marcos Gallery, initiating a program of exhibitions in different countries: Sweden, Brazil, China, among others, attending the most important fairs of the moment. His work is represented in the Reina Sofia National Museum, the Museum of Vitoria, the Municipal Museum of Contemporary Art of Madrid, the Instituto de Empresa and the Instituto de Crédito Oficial, the Mapfre Foundation and in the collections Testimoni of La Caixa, Banco Hipotecario, Tándem DDM, Banco Europeo de Inversiones, Loewe Hnos, Argentaria and the International Olympic Committee, among others.