On a beach, barefoot and in view of the bathers: this is the new work by Santiago Picatoste in Marbella

Barefoot on a rattan carpet, from noon Santiago Picatoste (Mallorca, 1971) shapes at Playa Padre, in Marbella, a new member of his 'Lego' series, a piece measuring 1.60 x 1.30 filled with color, energy, and movement, as part of 'Art Padre Special Edition', an initiative that this beach club has been developing every summer for the past 4 years in collaboration with Al Aire Libra.

He confesses that "this has been about stepping out of my usual work environment," his studio in Malaga, "to create a piece live," watched and also admired by all attendees on a tremendously hot August afternoon, where color and everything that color can convey take center stage. "It's a day when many things mix, a real challenge because artists are not used to having people watch us while we create; it's a mix of friends, strangers, beach, heat, music... this piece is definitely unique with all this energy, which is going to be very positive and dynamic," he tells SUR.

An event with a lot of motivation around and many onlookers, "an opportunity that Playa Padre gives us artists to step out of our comfort zone to experiment and to remind us that everything comes from within us, wherever we go creation emerges from within and the rest are tools that help us."

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Obsession with Color

Santiago Picatoste defines himself as a plastic artist whose style is hyperesthetic abstraction, which stems from post-pictorial abstraction of the 70s and whose leitmotif is color. "My ideas revolve around an obsession with color and everything that can be expressed with it; we can create sensations or emotions through the choice and mix of colors. In my work, you can see dynamics, impressionism, action painting, gesture, the act of painting but in a hyperesthetic, more polished, more balanced world," he claims.

His passion for color comes from his homeland, Mallorca, "where there is color everywhere and nature is exuberant, there I worked with monochromes, whites, and blacks and didn't need it. But I started to travel and color became a necessity, as a contrast to the big cities, Madrid, Barcelona, New York, or Tokyo," he reflects.

He considers himself self-taught although his studies in Fine Arts and at the Escuela Libre del Mediterráneo are part of his resume. "I like to dissect the work architecturally, with pieces that breathe and thus I manage to keep the abstractions floating and have their own movement, their own life, with dynamism." He has been exhibiting since 1994 and in 1998 he held his first solo exhibition in Barcelona. Moreover, he has received scholarships from the Miró Foundation, the Casa de Velázquez, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, and the Andratx Cultural Center. Picatoste's international dimension started in 2008 when he was featured in the book 'Contemporary Spanish Art'. His paintings are part of private collections, even royal households, the Helga de Alvear Museum in Cáceres, and iconic buildings like the IBM headquarters in Madrid, designed by Norman Foster.

"I Paint However I Want"

Last year, Santiago Picatoste received the Rotary Award in Mallorca. "The smallest painting I have measures 25x25 centimeters, I paint however I want, in the format I want and with the tools I want, I have even painted with industrial chloroform that disintegrates the pigment, I really enjoy the binomial between traditional painting and the industrial realm, aluminum, methacrylates, chloroform, wood... I enjoy complicating my life with art with the sole purpose of surprising myself," he says.

The painting born in Art Padre tells a story: "The architecture of the pictorial composition, a structure in superposition, with geometric cuts, with components like frozen sequences in an internal structure that is geometric with nods to pop-art with an urban essence and a tribute to abstraction and above all, a celebration of plastic arts," he narrates.

And when asked how he thinks people perceive his work, Picatoste smiles and confesses that "one learns to know that you cannot please everyone but people who find interest in my works I think see that there is something of passion, character, dynamics, chaos that comes from the gut, a moment of improvisation that needs to be controlled and then order, a moment of cleanliness."