Cocoroa e Tombuctú (Cocoroa and Timbuktu)

Antón Patiño actively participated in the 1980s renewal of the Galician cultural scene, mainly through the Rompente poetry group and by founding the Atlántica art group, which revived Galician art during this time. His painting from this period is characterised by a gestural and material expressionism, loaded with archaic symbols and mythical references from the Galician cultural tradition. Cocoroa e Tombuctú participated in the III Salón de los 16 (3rd Salon of the 16) organised by the Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, MEAC (Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art) and is part of the large-format series he produced during the 1980s. These are distinguished by the use of
intense colours, expressive strokes and a marked frontality that references a primitivism linked to Romanesque art. He duplicates the figures as if they were echoes of each other, generating both a dialogue and a tension between opposites. Reviving the use of African masks, he makes them a symbol that unites the ritual and the universal, aligned with his vision of painting as a territory of encounter and myth.

María Teresa López Flores