Painter and cultural manager · Born in 1945
Painter and cultural manager
Pepa Izquierdo Hernández is a painter and cultural manager born in Santa Cruz de Tenerife on 1 October 1945. Her career, formed between Tenerife, Barcelona and Madrid, has contributed to the renewal of figuration in contemporary Canarian art.
Pepa Izquierdo began her artistic training with anatomy and drawing lessons from Rafael Delgado. In 1968 she started at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where Pedro González was among her teachers. She continued her studies in Barcelona and, in 1969, entered Madrid's Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, studying with Francisco Echauz, Juan Barjola and Gregorio Toledo.
On returning to Tenerife in the 1970s, she began exhibiting through Sala Conca. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1974 at Sala Conca II in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Critics have linked her career to the so-called Generation of the 70s, a set of artists with diverse individual approaches who renewed spaces and debates in contemporary art in the islands during Spain's Transition.
Her painting, drawing and collage explore highly precise figuration, with domestic spaces, objects and scenes of intimacy as recurring elements. She was elected a full member of the Real Academia Canaria de Bellas Artes in 2001 and formally joined in 2004. In 2022, the Instituto Cabrera Pinto hosted Pepa Izquierdo: retrospectiva (1966-2022), an exhibition of 145 works spanning more than half a century of production.
