his legacy
Born in Alicante in 1940, Pepo Cantos was largely self taught, yet the drive to paint kept guiding his paths—from the streets of Paris to the galleries of New York, Florence, and Amsterdam. Two of his works are housed in Mubag, among others scattered across major cities. The INFORMACIÓN Club presents a sweeping survey of his career with sixty works gathered under the title Pepo Cantos, art figure, curated by his widow, Isabel Guiu, an art history scholar who has long kept his memory and momentum alive.
The opening event is scheduled for this Friday at 7:00 PM in the INFORMACIÓN Club exhibition hall, located at avda. Dr. Rico 17, Alicante, and the show will run through March 29. This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Cantos’s passing and follows seven years after the club last hosted a Cantos retrospective. The new installation centers the artist as the main axis, while Alicante’s sea views and landscapes fade into a more intimate focus on the person behind the works.
Through the pieces on display, themes unfold around the human figure in nuanced contexts. Solo portraits, intimate groups of friends, couples in quiet exchange, and intergenerational scenes appear alongside works that explore music and communal gathering. Nudity and anatomy are presented with a frankness that connects to Cantos’s expressive energy. A series created during a formative stay in New York, shown toward the end of his life in 1994, drew praise for its vigorous expressionist style. Isabel Guiu notes that Cantos’s career ended relatively early at the age of 58, leaving behind a rich, varied body of work that continues to resonate.
One notable piece from the exhibition is the cubist work Making mayonnaise by Pepo Cantos, a title that hints at the playful yet analytical mind behind the painter’s approach. The display not only highlights Cantos’s mature stylistic explorations but also traces the evolution of his technique across decades and media.
Guiu explains that Cantos treated Paris as a hub for his creative life, yet remained fundamentally grounded in the Spanish and Alicante circles that shaped his early development. Although he pursued multiple styles, he never stopped painting with vitality and curiosity. Cantos experimented across figuration, abstraction, and movements such as Fauvism, Impressionism, Expressionism, and Cubism, guided by a restless impulse to explore form, color, and mood. The exhibition offers a coherent view of how these varied interests coalesced into a distinctive personal language, a synthesis that reflected his belief in painting as a living, dynamic practice.
The catalogue for the show illuminates the range of techniques Cantos employed. Oil, tempera, charcoal, and ink populate canvases and drawings of different scales, from intimate studies to larger formats. The works span from the early seventies through his final creations in the late nineties, a period rich with experimentation and discovery. Small works accompany the broader presentation, including a Japanese haiku installation by Guiu that adds a poetic counterpoint to the visual program.
his legacy
When counting the years, the artist would have turned 84, and his widow emphasizes that Alicante always held a central place in Cantos’s heart. The couple traveled widely across the country, painting and engaging with a broad audience of peers and admirers. Though Cantos enjoyed recognition outside Spain, his influence within the Alicante region has been more gradual, a point Guiu notes with both pride and a touch of wistfulness.
To keep Cantos’s voice alive, Guiu has organized annual exhibitions that showcase his works and introduce new generations to his creative identity. She remains in touch with foundations and museum institutions to explore future stewardship and possible acquisitions, ensuring the works continue to find homes where they can be studied and appreciated. Cantos’s legacy is presented not only as a catalog of paintings but as a living dialogue about painting itself and its role in memory, culture, and community.
Exhibition hours
The show welcomes visitors Monday through Friday, from 5:30 PM to 9:30 PM, and will be accessible until March 29.
Note: The curatorial voice and the selection within Pepo Cantos, art figure underscore the artist’s ongoing relevance for contemporary audiences, inviting viewers to reflect on how a lifetime spent observing cities, people, and performances can still speak with freshness and urgency. This presentation not only documents art history but also offers a personal portrait of a man who painted life with unflinching honesty and a lively, irrepressible spirit. [citation attribution: información Club exhibition records and Isabel Guiu, art history scholar, curator of Pepo Cantos, art figure: exhibition notes].