20^th Century Spanish

Widely recognised as one of the most seminal 20^th century artists from Galicia, Laxeiro belonged to a generation of pioneers who endeavoured to modernise the art of the region from the 1930s onwards.

The artist began studying at the Centro Gallego in Havana, where his family had emigrated when he was still a teenager. In 1925 he returned to Spain, and moved to Madrid to enrol at the San Fernando School thanks to a grant from the Lalín Town Council in 1931. Two years later the artist returned to Galicia. That same year he had his first solo exhibition at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Santiago de Compostela.

His watercolours, oil paintings and prints show a predilection for a volume-based figuration with great inner power. However, after the Spanish Civil War his practice hardened and evolved towards a descriptive expressionism removed from naturalism.

In the 1950s he returned to Latin America, this time to Argentina, working between Buenos Aires and Spain. He would not return to live in Spain until 1970, perhaps encouraged by the opening in 1968 of the Museo Laxeiro in his hometown.