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Few
people can boast as he can of having rubbed shoulders
with the greatest and participated in
the most cutting edge artistic currents in Europe as
well as the other side of the Atlantic, even to have
turned away a milliondollar business deal with Pierre
Cardin. The fact is this restless cosmopolitan par excellence
lives amongst us. After much coming and going, Sansegundo
established his residence over ten years ago in Santa
Eulària. No doubt this is quite an honour. Dressed
with jeans, trainers and a baseball hat that give him
a youthful yankee air, at 78 this artist shamelessly
but humbly tells us about his adventures around the world.
The son of a merchant who loved art, as a kid Sansegundo
already showed great talent in painting. At 18 he left his
hometown of Santander and went to Madrid with a scholarship
to study at the arts school of San Fernando. He started to
train there but lacked inspiration, so in 1953 he went to
Paris, where he shared exhibition rooms with the greatest:
Picasso, Miró,... In 1956, the master sculptor Henry
Moore offered him work in his atélier in the British
countryside. As he has always done when destiny tempted him,
he did not hesitate to accept the offer and, while he only
stayed a few months, he assures that Moore taught him a lot.
Back in Madrid, he used to hang out at Café Gijón,
a meeting point for many artists. Camilo José Cela
was one of his friends back then. One afternoon, this friend
who would one day become a Nobel prize winner noticed a car
stopping and an amazing woman stepping out of it. She looked
foreign. "Hey", said Cela, "you speak English,
don't you? Go for her!"
Sansegundo walked up to the
elegant lady and asked her if she was North American. Later
that night they were dining in the best restaurant in Madrid
and a few days later he arrived in Ibiza for the first time.
At the beginning of the 60s, the island was ablaze with
culture, a refuge for European and American artists who wanted
to escape the bleak postwar rigid mentalities. Such efervescence
captured the young painter and he decided to shack up in
a little casita with the misterious American lady, in Es
Vivé.
Sansegundo soon joined the group "Ibiza
59" and took part in various exhibitions in the mythical
gallery "El Corsario", in Dalt Vila. In his own
words, "his jaw dropped" when he witnessed the
trendy atmosphere on the island which he "had not seen
in Paris, nor London, much less in Madrid". The artist
is nostalgic about those times gone by...
But then another unexpected gust of wind took his life in
a new direction. During an exhibition at the modern art museum
in Madrid, a rich gallery-owner from New York offered to
buy all of his paitings. Sansegundo accepted and two months
later he was invited to go exhibit his work in the Big Apple.
The Matutes family helped him to transport his artwork to
Barcelona and from there he sailed on to the United States.
Little did he know, but he would not return soon. As soon
as he arrived, he met Ruth Kligman, the director of the Washington
Square Gallery, in Greenwich Village, one of the most prestigious
art galleries. Stunned by her Elizabeth Taylor-like beauty,
Sansegundo did not hesitate to propose there and then, and
a month and a half later Andy Warhol became their best man.
Once again, Sansegundo entered the most cutting edge artistic
circles on the arm of a beautiful lady. His friendship with
De Kooning or Rothko and the Pop Art of Warhol and friends
at 'The Factory' left an indellible mark on his ample production. "Lots
of colour, proportions and silhouettes, without ever losing
the chromatic balance", he explains.
Carlos Sansegundo has been married three times and has two
offsprings. He seems to have lived enjoying what he loves
most: bringing to life with his hands the shapes and colours
that since childhood dance in his mind. |
