Together with other Galicia-born painters from his generation, like Manuel Colmeiro (1901-1999), OteroAbeledo, also known as Laxeiro, is one of the main exponents of the 1930s creative avant-garde that never relinquished its popular roots.

He began studying art in Havana, where his family had moved when he was a teenager. There he became interested in Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945) and Jesús Rodríguez Corredoyra (1889-1939), who had exhibitions in Cuba while he was still living there. On returning to Spain, he furthered his training in Madrid, shifting his attention towards a more traditional style, focused on the land and on his native rural environment.

His watercolours, oil paintings and prints veered toward a volume-based figuration sustained on great inner power. However, after the Spanish Civil War his work hardened, eluding naturalism and shifting towards a descriptive expressionism. Along with Manuel Colmeiro (1901-1999), Luis Seoane (1910-1979) and Carlos Maside (1897-1958), he was a member of the artists group called Los Renovadores del Arte Gallego(Reformers of Galician Art) for their attempt to fuse tradition and modernity.

The stage of his life spent in Vigo from 1942 to 1951 is one of his most fertile periods. It was then when he began to paint his first scenes with carnival characters, children’s subject matters and motherhoods.

Throughout his career the artist made many self-portraits, and indeed one can follow his evolution as a painter through his output in this genre. Either in drawings or paintings, the artist created his own portrait in a pure academicist style or, in later years, in a more expressionistic language. This particular portrait was made during his Vigo period and reveals a strong connection with a work on paper at Fundación Laxeiro dated in 1941.