Ángel Sánchez

Ángel Sánchez’s complex cultural production encompasses not just the actual literary genres of narrative, poetry, essay and translation he engages with, but also their materials and signic supports, such typography and calligraphy.

His visual poetry and his discursive poetics give shape to a unique corpus of work which revolves around the idea of contaminatio in its Latin etymology, which is to say, to mingle various genres in one single work.

This premise responds to his stance to the world, given that Ángel Sánchez defines himself as a mestizo author. Formed intellectually in Europe—and the social revolution of Paris in May 1968—his nomadic gaze takes him on an everlasting pilgrimage to the sources of his memory.

His visual poetry is an homage to Gothic calligraphy, to Goethe and to the typographers of the Encyclopédie. He also pays tribute to the goddess Tanit and to the etchings and paintings of Tassili N´Ajjer. It is as if his restless hands wished to exhaust all available tools and materials: rotring, letraset, pens, ink, pencils, photocopies, markers, textiles, photos, linoleum, prints, collages, poetic objects…

A special mention is deserved for his reflections on islandness and the iconography of the island, which are also captured in two of his major works: La casa vestida and El signo insular.

This exhibition explores Ángel Sánchez’s visual poetry in a selection of around one hundred works spanning from 1974 to 2019.

Ángel Sánchez (Gáldar, Canary Islands, 1943), Canary Islands Literature Award 2018.