Virgilio Santaella

(1964 San Pablo Huitzo, Oax. México)

Engaging in a dialogue with Virgilio Santaella’s works involves not only the eyes but also the memory of taste, smell, touch, hearing, emotion, breathing. Viewers always see themselves within something recently lived and are taken to the simple memory of a caress, a smile, a conversation, a moment of silence. Virgilio paints all of this with beautiful simplification, taking the essence of each situation. He expresses what he observes, what he perceives, what he feels.

The underlying recourse of Santaella’s abstract art is evocation. Some artists exercise their imagination in the creative instant. Virgilio evokes, he refers to the night, the day, the moment of interaction with another person, to an instant in time. One must live what one paints.