Antonio Cavagnaro
b. 1972
Santiago, Chile
Cavagnaro belongs to a generation of painters who were awarded a scholarship at the Academy of Guillermo Muñoz Vera in Chinchón, Spain. The Academy was well known for its realistic mastery and influence, notwithstanding, Cavagnaro stood out for his freedom of expression and disdain for following rules. His paintings have a special richness which clearly express his joy for painting; which is revealed in his passion, commitment, and dedication. He is not willing to paint by any rule or be linked to any Academy, and shows his real personality as he paints with his own special brush strokes that in the end produce a magnificent painting —it can be said the work is of an excessive and dispensable elaboration but in the end reveals coherent pictorial material.
His pictorial proposal, always of figurative tendency, insists on the shapes interpretative value, separating him somehow from traditional realistic painting and completely cut away from hyperrealistic iconography. On the contrary, he tries to grant an expressive and strong nature in the pictorial stamp. It is without a doubt the main element. Dramatic surroundings in compositions generally of few elements, create a more forceful protagonist. Although a certain description exists in his paintings, it is important to reflect a concept.
His themes come from his gut and therefore are passionate. Cavagnaro introduces very diverse symbols and images in his paintings. Human figures, gloomy and suffocating interiors, morbid, hideous and unsettled constructions. His work reveals a fascination with the amazing - flamboyant social behavior including erotic fantasies, bacchanal amusement and recreation, pagan ceremonies and a thoughtful and direct critique of religion.
Antonio Cavagnaro currently lives and works in Madrid.