SIMON ROMANO

The colour-intoxicated paintings by Simón Romano proclaim the joy of living and the Epiphany of a festive Demiurge. They are the humanised gods of classic Greece – far from the pathetic crucified of the Christian altar. In Romano’s clear world, things have the precise contours and the beautiful shine of things newly born. Or…Is it maybe the optimistic spirit of these paintings that take us back to the golden age of childhood?
Childhood is art’s territory: it is the innocent look of a child that searches the mystery of reality with anxious curiosity and his normal way of relating with the world. Children weave nets and elaborate complex mythologies with their surroundings. It is the way of thinking that is at the origin of man, where time does not exist or it is a form of eternity. Magic nourishes our imagination, turning everyday things into wonder. Childhood is a world-apart from time and immune to death.

                                                         BIOGRAPHIC DATA

Simón Romano was born in La Línea (Algeciras) in 1968 – the year of the French May and the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s as he likes to recall. His parents die at the fire of a Lisbon Theatre, where the play “Midsummer Night’s Dream” was being shown. Horacio is miraculously saved while he goes out to fetch some munchies. He was 8 years old. The orphan moves to Tarifa, where his father’s mother manages a small hotel next to the beach. He begins his artistic career decorating surf-.boards. He studies art in Rome, where he adopts the name Simón Romano. He lives there for 7 years and marries the daughter of a prosperous Nigerian businessman. He lives in Tangiers, smokes a pipe and has three children.