Painter and illustrator · Born in 1947
Painter and illustrator
Paco Sánchez Rodríguez, known as Paco Sánchez, is a painter and illustrator born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1947. Trained at the Escuela Luján Pérez and a pupil of Felo Monzón, he is one of the figures of the Canarian artistic generation of the 1970s.
Paco Sánchez joined the Escuela Luján Pérez in 1958. There he trained with Felo Monzón and formed a lasting connection with an institution central to modern art in Gran Canaria. His childhood in the San Nicolás neighbourhood and his observation of Gran Canaria's landscape nourished a distinctive visual world that made the island and its forms the material of his painting.
His first solo exhibition was held in 1975. The Government of the Canary Islands and the CAAM place him among the leading figures of the artistic generation of the 1970s, for work that combines references to the archipelago's past, apparently primitive figuration and an independent formal development. The CAAM retrospective in 2018 brought together around one hundred works spanning five decades.
In 2017 he received the Premio Canarias de Bellas Artes e Interpretación. The official award documentation highlights his capacity to create a personal universe and to make primitive references contemporary, together with a social and identity-based dimension of reflection. His work is held, among other collections, by the CAAM and TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes.
