Manuel Quintana Martelo
Manuel Quintana Martelo (Roxos, Santiago de Compostela, 1946) began his artistic career in the seventies, marked by a strong social commitment. Bachelor of the Arts by the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de Sant Jordi, Barcelona, his work soon evolved into processual recordings of urban and expressionist trends.
He was part of the Atlántica movement in the eighties, and in the nineties he settled in New York, where he successfully exhibited his work, and also in Caracas, Miami and Porto. He has taught at Instituto Xelmírez, Santiago de Compostela, where he was also head teacher, but he finally gave up teaching so that he could fully focus on his artistic production.
Quintana headed the Association of Visual Artists of Galicia and, subsequently, the Royal Galician Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been given a retrospective at the Auditorio de Galicia (2007), a monograph at the Diputación de A Coruña (2010), and a solo exhibition at Kiosko Alfonso, A Coruña (2011). In 2012 he was awarded the Premio da Cultura Galega in the category of Plastic Arts.
Since 2012 Quintana has produced sculptural works —transferring the shapes on the canvases into three dimensions. His own figure, his table and work tools are added to the media as part of the work. His Containers series of paintings, begun in 2012, is the starting point for the 2021 exhibition produced by the MARCO, Museum of Contemporary Art of Vigo.
