Santiago Picatoste
The Monumental Artist
I met Santiago Picatoste (Palma, 1971) at his studio/home in Madrid in the year 2000, when I interviewed him for the culture section of the newspaper Última Hora. That afternoon he was captivated by my girlfriend at the time, and I asked him a series of routine questions because all I wanted to do was get home quickly and carry on writing poems. I assumed we would never meet again after that first encounter. But a few weeks later we began to forge one of those valuable lifelong friendships. My then-girlfriend is a thing of the past, and so are my poems. But today, Santi is still my friend, my brother. A monumental artist and person who has achieved fulfilment in all the aspects of his life. And he continues to grow.
text Iván Terrasa
“Seeing myself drawing every weekend, until I realised I had never stopped drawing”. This is Santi’s first art-related memory. Drawings that were also an escape route for him after his parents separated when he was eight years old.
Another six years would pass until, aged 14, he decided to sign up for lessons with a Dutch teacher in Palma who opened his eyes for ever. “It was wonderful, the most Bohemian thing you can imagine, full of canvases, easels, drawing blogs, from time to time a model …”.
During that first learning period, when he was still a teenager, Santi’s idea of an artist was somebody who was very Bohemian and romantic. “I fell in love with art through Impressionism, Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt [...]
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