Marcos Bontempo Argentine/Spanish, b. 1969

Marcos Bontempo was born in Argentina in 1969. At the age of six, he went to live in Spain with his extended family. He now lives in Ronda, a city in the mountainous community of Andalusia known for its rugged beauty, bullfighting, and the creative individuals who found inspiration there, including Rainer Maria Rilke, Ernest Hemingway, Orson Wells and Ava Gardner, and the famous bullfighter Antonio Ordonez.  

Bontempo suffers from schizophrenic episodes, and his exuberant gestural paintings seem a positive means of exorcising demons. Alone in his studio, haunted by the outside world, Bontempo uses acrylic paint or ink in combination with salt and/or iron to orchestrate expressive works-a world of polymorphic beings, some human, some half-human, half-animal. His figures communicate both psychological turmoil and hope, contorted in pain, yet vital in their vigorous push towards freedom.