Nestor Sanmiguel Dast (Zaragoza), 73 years old, has been studying the relationship between words & painting for nearly four decades. The Reina Sofia Museum is currently reviewing this long, lonely journey. It dedicates “La peripeciadel automata” to the “peripheral.” artist. Beatriz Herraez, its curator, describes it as a retrospective with nearly 130 works. It includes the work of a rare creator who made his living in Aranda de Duero as a pattern maker for textiles from 2000 to 2000.
It will be on display at Madrid’s Parque del Retiro from September to October. This is part of a double-project that also includes the opening of the Artium Museum Vitoria on June 24. Both projects explore a production in which pictorial rules, rule systems, and graphic signs intersect. According to Artium’s Director, curator, creative work is understood as an abstract machine that structures people’s lives.
Sanmiguel settled on the “geographical technical and material periphery” deliberately. He combined his factory work in industrial tailoring with painting until he could make a living from his art at fifty years of age. Since he started plastic activity with groups like ‘A Ua Crag (1985-1996), ‘Segundo Partido de la Montana (1987-1988), and ‘Red District (1990-1992), he claims to be a “systematic, methodical” producer.
Oba de Nestor Saniguel / R.C.
He was an isolated artist until 2005, when he was shown at the Musac de Leon. This exhibition helped to bring him international attention and strengthen the support for galleries like Trayecto and Maisterravalbuena. His vast and highly valued work, which included hundreds of drawings and paintings that were almost invisible until a few decades ago, “makes up an exhibition in which the boundaries between image, text, and representation become visible, and problematic”, according the curator who describes Sanmiguel as “an artist’s artist”.
His ideas are also far removed from conventional conventions, particularly those that talk about the exhaustion or some plastic languages. However, he is easily identifiable with references to literature, art, and popular culture. Herraez says that Herraez’s thinking about him challenges contemporary production methods and his notion of time. He uses passages from Julio Cortazar’s works, like Rayuela or El libro de Manuel, in some of his paintings. In others, he draws inspiration from books like ‘Las Horas,’ by Virginia Woolf.
Manuel Borja Villel (director of Reina Sofia), considers Sanmiguel “a singular artist”, the owner of a work in which the image and text are confused. It is the result a carefully thought-out construction that has been measured down to the last detail.
Detail of another oba made by Nestor Sanmiguel/ R.C.
He combines the resources he has gained as a patternmaker with Dadaism. You may be familiar with Tristan Tzara and Francis Picabia, but also Tapies and Miro. The director of the museum said that he is a great artist. Poropio Sanmiguiel knows that his experience as a pattern cutter and maker was crucial to his success as a painter. <>. He was fed up with the “painting at nights taking away hours of sleep” and decided to “dedicate all his efforts to my paintings”.
