The distinctive style of this sculptor from Galicia is completely unmistakable. While still a student at the School of Arts and Crafts in Santiago de Compostela he joined the

 Fato onírico Galego 

agroup that came together at the Maestro Mateo Arts and Crafts School in Santiago de Compostela. With roots in Surrealism and Dada, its members, with a special mention for Francisco Leiro, used automatic drawing as part of their creative process.

group, when his work was still toying with elements from Surrealism and from . In the late 1980s, Leiro moved to New York and began to work for Marlborough Gallery.

It was around this time when his sculpture adopted a more overtly expressionist undertone, which he coupled with an interest in ancient figurative sculpture and the inclusion of abstract structures that give his work a timelessness and metaphoric resonance. Leiro weds the tragic and the humorous, reality and fiction, internationalism and localism, forging a unique vernacular of contrasts that he uses to convey the desired message.

Made of wood, this piece was acquired at Galería Marlborough, Madrid. Although the artist works with highly diverse materials which he juxtaposes to trigger conflicting feelings in the beholder, he usually falls back on wood whenever he wishes to achieve a greater sense of realism in his creations. The malleability of this fine material to which Leiro has always been strongly attached —his father and grandfather before him were cabinetmakers — allows him to manipulate and transform it almost at will and to attain a warmth impossible to obtain with other materials.

Here, the human figure has shed the outer shell that once constrained it, with the revealed anatomy adding greater expressiveness. The character’s posture, with one leg fused with the support, intentionally suggests that the work is unfinished, ironically hinting at the possible absorption of the character by the covering concealing the ground beneath, or perhaps he has not yet fully emerged from the medium he comes from.