The Seventh Seal | El Séptimo Sello Painting

Like the majority of artists Xosé Luis Otero comes from a traditional academic background. Thus his first works were in the field of figurative realistic painting, where the main feature was the contour marked by a line or well defined color groups. Interestingly, he also produced​ a few sculptures of great quality but decided not to follow that path and focus on painting instead. With time that line became more diffused and it was necessary for the viewer to stand back to appreciate the effect of what he had expressed with his brushes. The colors became gradually less strong, with more energetic and dense brush strokes creating a realistic, organic atmosphere. The theme of his work focused on landscapes, mainly Galician. Lush, wet, covered by fog, the Galician forest was perfectly captured by this artist. He played in his paintings with the horizon line, with the absence not only of man but of any trace of his presence, with a blurred touch, which Otero supplied with excellent use of color and the gift the artist possesses in capturing environments and sensations. Otero does not paint a “real” landscape. Rather his painting shows the limitations of the camera to capture the true essence of a place. The camera only captures one emotionless moment in time. Whereas Otero makes it eternal, timeless, mainly through his expertise and talent in capturing light and atmosphere. There are many prejudices against landscape painters. However, even the strongest critics, those with the most negative views, have to admit that this painter challenges the boundaries through his power to distil the very essence of nature on canvas. And so, although his work has a title rooting it in reality the effect is much more emotional than tangible. However, the enormous creative potential of this painter cannot be constrained to a single subject or a single approach. Through his obsession with capturing light and atmospheres, Otero has gone a step further by showing industrial scenes, increasingly blurring the line and changing the range of colors to those much stronger: A touch of red, pure white tinged with yellow or vivid green. What was once a peaceful forest is now a noisy crane. Yes, noisy. The frenzy of his brushwork conveys the rage almost like that of an Italian Futurist. His last works increasingly lean towards pure abstraction.