For critics, he was the most important Galician painter of the 20th century. But his work went practically unnoticed outside the borders of his land. Now an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid) aims to discover the more mature look of José Otero Abeledo, known as Laxeiro. The exhibition, which opened this afternoon, will remain open until July 24 and will exhibit forty pieces by the painter from Lalil produced during his stay in Argentina.
The exhibition “It was a man. Laxeiro in America (Buenos Aires, 1950-1970)” is the main proposal of the Laxeiro Year, which is celebrated in 2022 after the Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts decided to dedicate the “Día das Artes” to the great artist, one of the fathers of the Galician pictorial avant-garde.
Curated by Carlos L. Bernárdez, historian and art critic, the exhibition brings together pieces from various institutions such as the Ramón María Aller Municipal Museum in Lalín, the Pontevedra Museum or Afundación, focusing on Laxeiro’s mature period, which was installed in Argentina for twenty years, immersing himself in the intellectual environment of the capital of Buenos Aires, a focus of Galician emigration and exile. It is a selection of some of the most important works that make up the Universal Catalog of Laxeiro, a project directed by the painter’s foundation that, after ten years of research, was the first record of this type made by a Galician artist. . After passing through Madrid, the exhibition can be seen at the Cidade da Cultura in Santiago and later it will make another stop at the Cervantes Institute in Paris. With it, it is intended to promote the recognition of Laxeiro’s work and place his legacy in its rightful place. In addition, the retrospective is completed with paintings by authors such as Carlos Maside, Manuel Prego de Oliver, Manuel Pesqueira, Antonio Faílde, Luis Seoane or Julia Minguillón, symbolically recreating the exhibition in Buenos Aires in 1951 that motivated Laxeiro’s departure to America.
The Regional Minister of Culture, Román Rodríguez, and the Director of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Tomás Marco, were in charge of opening the exhibition in Madrid. Rodríguez highlighted the recognition that the stay »of this exhibition at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts represents, to which he thanked its «involvement» and «enthusiastic reception» of Laxeiro’s work. For his part, Tomás Marco highlighted the “fair vindication of an essential figure in contemporary art, whose critical fortune was less than that of other names of the Galician avant-garde, but no less relevant due to his connection with some of the most influential aesthetic formulations of the 20th century”.
