Pep Anton Xaus
Martorell, Spain
“I paint against the anger of those who seek to censor the absence of makeup, of those who still become scandalized by nudity, especially if the bodies are ordinary, natural, and distant from the canons of a supposed aesthetic perfection. In an attempt to portray women free from guilt and sin, without shame or complexes, confident, natural, autonomous… empowered. Women who are intimidating because they decide their own way of being, escaping moral conventions and traditional roles, also aiming to capture a moment, as if it were a frame from a sequence, to freeze an unrepeatable gesture.”
Pep Anton Xaus
Xaus is an artist with Painting education with Jaume Amat (Martorell), Fine Arts studies and a Speciality course in pictorical procedures with Jordi Grisolia in Escola Massana (Barcelona). His artistic work began and was inspired by his admiration for the muralists, painters, and Romanic artisans, due to their tenacity in conveying social and moral rules to naive societies through art contemplation, devoid of aesthetic codes.Subsequently, he was struck by the influence of American Pop art from the sixties and seventies. From his perspective, these painters resembled the Romanic artists in constructing bold, precise, and concise images in service of the new religions: consumerism and frivolity.In recent years, his work has consistently revolved around desire and self-portraiture. These subjects can be seen as risky and even dangerous. It is conceivable that his desire to paint leads him to embrace these risks, thus giving purpose to his work. His current references include the “natural nudes” or “daily nudes” of Lucian Freud and the eroticism that emanates from Egon Schiele’s brazen desire.