Ceesepe

Carlos Sánchez Pérez (Madrid, 1958-2018), better known as Ceesepe, was unquestionably one of the most active cultural actors of the age, who made the greatest contribution to giving a renewed, radical air to the Spanish artistic panorama, acting also as a bridge between the two main artistic centres: Madrid and Barcelona.

His first drawings focused on telling stories. Drawings channelled through the medium of comics gave life to characters such as Slober, his most famous and transgressive figure. His first cartoons appeared, at first 70’s, in the magazine Star, an icon of Spanish counterculture and later in other publications like El Víbora.

With boldness and brilliance, Ceesepe became a master of the comic and one of the reference points for this discipline. The comics of the Rrollo in Barcelona and the Cascorro Factory in Madrid are two milestones among his work, and also within this movement that brought together a good number of artists including El Hortelano, Alberto García Alix and Ouka Leele. Known as the artists of La Movida, those who formed part of this movement were always willing to create collectively, never hemmed in by a single creative medium.

In 1982 he lived in Paris at Miquel Barceló’s studio. During this year he collaborated with L’Echo de Savanes magazine publishing comics like “Fifty ways to leave your lover”.

In the mid 80’s, Ceesepe was to put an end to the first stage centred on comics and drawing to develop his facet as a painter in bigger formats. “Story-telling is getting too small,” he admitted in a television interview. The cartoons were being filled with colour and were becoming larger in format till they occupied canvases full of people and shapes. Although Ceesepe would dedicate himself from that time on to painting, drawing would always have a strong presence in all his work.

At the same time he started to collaborate in the cinema industry along with Pedro Almodóvar, doing the posterwork and credits of Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón (Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Average Girls), now a cult film from Almodóvar’s filmography. This was not to be his last collaboration with the then still unknown director. In 1987 he did the poster for La ley del deseo (Law of Desire) and in 2003 he designed one of the posters that appear as a prop in the film La Mala Educación (Bad Education) for the fictional film La Noche de Madrid (Madrid Night) directed by the character played by the actor Fele Martínez. This close collaboration was portrayed well in the exhibition that the Paris Cinémathèque dedicated to the director in 2006, Almodóvar Exhibition. It showed some of the creations that Ceesepe had made for Pedro Almodóvar’s films.

His link with the cinema does not only lie in his facet as a poster designer. Ceesepe also shot and directed some short and medium-length films such as El día que muera Bombita (The Day Bombita Dies), shot in 1983 together with Alberto García-Alix. This film is a true reflection of his work in comics and foretold the kind of colourist painting that he was to develop later.

Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes 627 08010 Barcelona – Tel. +34 936 338 360 – www.rociosantacruz.com Earlier, in 1980 he had shot a short 3-minute film in 16 mm called El Beso (The Kiss) about paintings and drawings. Throughout the 80s he continued directing and creating other films for TVE like Amor Apache (Apache Love) (1984) with Alberto García-Alix and Lola Moriarty as protagonists.

Ceesepe was a habitué of the cult places of La Movida including Paloma Chamorro’s advanced programme La Edad De Oro (The Golden Age) that was broadcast in the public television in the 80s and was the voice of the artistic, cultural and musical movement known as La Movida and of the more international underground movement in Spain.

Ceesepe passed away at the age of 60 in Madrid after an intense life of creative and vital excesses. At his death he left a prolific production that has recently been purchased by the Archivo Lafuente. Henceforth it will be RocioSantaCruz Gallery in Barcelona that exclusively distributes and sells his work.

Selected solo exhibitions
2020 ARCOmadrid SOLO project, RocioSantaCruz.
2019 Vicios Modernos, Ceesepe, 1973-1983, La Casa Encendida, Madrid.
2014 Manual práctico de Pintura #3, Espacio Valverde, Madrid.
2011 Ceesepe, Ateneo de Madrid.
2006 Scope New York Art Fair, Galería J. Alcoea, Nueva York.