Ceesepe

Carlos Sánchez Pérez (Madrid, 1958-2018)

Better known as Ceesepe, he was born in the Spain of the Franco dictatorship, which ended, after two decades, with the return of democracy. Artistic practices were the only means of escape in a grey and anodyne country. From 1978 and for almost a decade, Madrid was the origin and meeting point of an upheaval called La Movida. A creative and vital explosion that convulsed the youth of the time.

Ceseepe contributed to giving a renewed and radical air to the Spanish artistic scene, acting, moreover, as a bridge between the two main artistic centres: Madrid and Barcelona. Before becoming the painter who extracted poetry from the dissident streets of Madrid, he was a cartoonist. His work in the field of comics developed over a period of barely ten years.

His influence and resonance was not limited to that period and, today, decades later, he stands as a singular mirror of the life that followed Franco’s death and the end of the dictatorship. Politically incorrect and rebellious by nature, the comic allowed a beginner like Ceesepe to experiment with drawing and also with its narrative possibilities.

However, he soon outgrew the medium and Ceesepe’s work began to mutate, attracted by the possibilities of painting. The vignettes grew, colour began to conquer the terrain, and the increasingly sophisticated and elaborate comic strips became pictorial proposals that heralded what was to come.

Before abandoning comics for good, Ceesepe created the posters for Pedro Almodóvar’s debut film Pepi, Luci, Bom y otras chicas del montón, and together with García-Alix he wrote, drew and shot a gem of amateur cinema: the medium-length film El día que muera Bombita, the colourful and dramatic comic version of which reveals the personality of the future painter.

Ceesepe’s works represent a crowded party and a dissident sexuality. Languid young ladies, Apaches, sailors, clarinets and trumpets, black jazzmen, Paris la nuit, signs of the zodiac, images of assassins with knives reflected in mirrors, Belle Epoque, pointy galactic beings, naked bodies of impossible girls mixed with angels from hell, animals drawn from the madness of Bosch.

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.

Press
https://elasombrario.publico.es/ceesepe-vicios-modernos-madrid/
https://elpais.com/elpais/2019/10/04/eps/1570187038_870056.html
https://www.ocana.cat/blog/ceesepe-el-mas-madrileno-de-los-catalanes-el-mas-catalan-de-los-madrilenos/
https://www.art-madrid.com/es/artista/ceesepe
https://www.circulobellasartes.com/espectaculos/va-por-ceesepe/