Pablo Merchante

An evident raw energy runs through almost all the paintings of Pablo Merchante (Huelva, 1982). A sense that can be described as primitive. The ritual, the ancestral and the vigor of manual work is always present in his way of doing. Pablo Merchante presents a work where the formal accent is placed on the complexity of tensions, the combination of finishes and the tactal quality of the works, as well as the importance of tradition in our days. His conceptual interest lies in the identity of the current human being. The diversification of personalities or the role of an individual within small and large social groups. The themes he uses are paradise and the human being. "I pursue painting as a language, as a form of reflection, but also as the best way to endure life." The pictorial resources that he uses are defined as points or commas in a poem or as illegible symbols in a musical score. From that skeleton, color planes, small synthesis, intentions, zooms, figurative approaches and abstract investigations are formed... The final image may seem anecdotal or almost improvised, but it is actually based on intuition. In some works this image insinuates the appearance of an organic reality treated as a mixture between still life and portrait, in others the heads or faces are positioned as the search for an ideal that is distant from human nature. Graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Seville, he has completed a Master's degree in Processes research at the same University. He also studied Music at the Manuel de Falla Superior Conservatory in Seville. A career that he finished very young and which offered him a vision and a reflection on the sensitive and the reality that leads him towards the way of thinking and creating that he now develops. In his curriculum he has received awards such as the Vázquez Díaz Scholarship (Dip. Huelva), the First Paul Ricard International Painting Prize, the Second Prize from the University of Jaén and has been a finalist in the BMW Awards as well as receiving a scholarship from the Bogliasco Foundation (Genoa) and the Art Cycle Foundation (Slovenia) among others. He has participated in numerous residences such as the meetings of New Artists, the Rodríguez Acosta Scholarship (Granada) and has worked in Collections such as the UNIA or the Modern Museum of Santo Domingo.