Pablo Echaurren is an Italian painter, cartoonist and writer. Born in Rome in 1951 to the Sicilian actress Angela Faranda and the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Sebastian Matta.
Pablo Echaurren began painting at 18 when through Gianfranco Baruchello he came into contact with the Milanese critic and gallery owner Arturo Schwarz who began to promote his work in Italy and abroad. Between 1971 and 1975 he held exhibitions in Berlin, Basel, Zurich, Brussels, Philadelphia, New York and in 1975 he was invited to exhibit at the Paris Biennial.
His artistic production is characterized by continuous experimentation with new forms and languages of expression and for the contamination of genres in continuous oscillation between high and low, between culture and frivolity, whose sole objective will always remain the rejection of pictorial conventions and the pursuit of one's own ideal of art open to everyone.
Pablo Echaurren created posters, illustrations, book covers, including that of the best-seller Pigs with Wings.
In the eighties and nineties he created numerous avant-garde comics such as Caffeine of Europe, Mayakovsky, Nivola flies, Futurism against, Life drawn by Dino Campana, Evola in Dada, Life of Pound, Dada with ticks.
He is also the author of numerous essays, polemical pamphlets on the world of art and novels.
In 2004 an anthology of his works was held at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome while in 2006 at the Auditorium Parco della Musica held a solo exhibition of his most recent works, repeating it in 2008 in Siena at the Magazzini del Sale. In 2009 the MIAAO, International Museum of Applied Arts Today, in Turin celebrated the centenary of futurism with an exhibition focused on his work.
In 2010 the artist, together with his wife Claudia Salaris, created the Foundation Echaurren Salaris. In 2013 the exhibition Matta: Roberto Sebastian Matta, Gordon Matta-Clark, Pablo Echaurren aims to investigate the links between a father and his two artist sons.
In 2015 with the exhibition Counterpainting, the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome delves into the socio-political aspects of Pablo Echaurren's work. In 2016, Chile paid homage to him for the first time with a retrospective at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago, curated by Inès Ortega-Màrquez and entitled Make Art Not Money.
His works are currently in the permanent collection of some museums including the National Gallery, the Maxxi and the Macro in Rome, the Mic in Faenza, the Mart in Rovereto and the Museo del Novecento in Milan.
Controcultura