FROM AFRICA WITH LOVE Painting

Filiberto Montesinos Castañon was born in 1972 in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. He turned toward art ever since his infancy, but first began studying business administration at the Centre of Professional Studies “Fray Bartolomé de las Casas” in Chiapas. After having graduated in that discipline, he followed an artistic training at the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas (UNICACH) and took courses in creativity at the Free State University of Puebla, where his first individual exhibition took place in 1993. In 2003 he was honoured "Best New Artist of the Year" in Los Angeles by the Foundation "Parents against cancer," with commendations from US Vice President Dick Cheney. Filiberto considers himself as a surrealist figurative painter in the tradition of the Mexican artists David Alfaro Siqueiros, Remedios Varo and the US American Georgia O'Keeffe. The latter opened his eyes to the poetry of the details of everyday life. The starting point and primary objective of any of his paintings is to create a powerful mural with soul and texture. He therefore very often pre-treats his canvases covering them with successive layers of a rich mixture of oil paint and sand; either hard and thick like the sand from the Palm Springs desert, or soft and fine like the river sand from other regions of the world. Combining these materials with a selection of strong colours, Filiberto manages to give his work a unique and fascinating expression, fully displaying the harmony of the selected motive into a full-scale aesthetic moment. Filiberto's work has been widely exhibited internationally like :United States, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Austria, Czech Republic, Pekin, Taipei, Germany, France, Belgium, Holland, among others. Filiberto Montesinos is currently living in Stuttgart, Germany. He is member of the German Federal Association of Visual Artists (BBK), and the Association of Visual Artists from Württemberg (VBKW).