Ceesepe

Ceesepe

Ceesepe

Spanish illustrator and cartoonist (1958-2018)

Carlos Sánchez Pérez (31 May 1958 – 7 September 2018), known professionally as Ceesepe, (Spanish: [θeˈsepe]) was a Spanish painter, comics artist and illustrator.[1][2] He was especially prolific in drawings and collages, with his style is often classified as pop art.[3] He is considered a major figure in La Movida Madrileña.[4][5] His pseudonym is based on the Spanish pronunciation of his initials: C: ce, S: ese, P: pe = "Ceesepe".[6]

In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Sánchez and the second or maternal family name is Pérez.
Quick Facts Born, Died ...

In 2011, he received Spain's Gold Medal of Merit in the Fine Arts.[7]

Biography

At sixteen years old, halfway through the 1970's, Ceesepe was introduced to the world of underground comix, coming into contact with Barcelonian artists and illustrators such as Max, Nazario Luque [es], and Javier Mariscal. He worked with them in Barcelona up until 1979.[8] He was one of the most popular painters in the artistic boom of La Movida Madrileña. His work at that stage consisted of screen prints, film posters, album covers, and illustrations.[9]

"My older brother drew and my father and grandfather were carpenters. I was in art school for like a month and left it. That's all my artistic training. There were a lot of people there that drew better than me. I could spend a week with a drawing that they did in a day, and mine would be half crooked, but they knew it was mine."

— Ceesepe, Vanity Fair[10]

He published his first cartoon series, Slober, in the magazines Star [es], Bésame Mucho [es], El Víbora, Madriz [es], and La Luna de Madrid [es].[11] He created the poster for Pedro Almodóvar's first feature-length film, Pepi, Luci, Bom (1980), and would go on to create eight films himself.[12]

"The time that most interests me is the birth and expansion of photography and painting's reaction to that. There are some years of convergence of many things and concepts that for me are still valid."

— Ceesepe, Madriz [es][13]

Ceesepe formed a distinctive style from the sum of multiple influences, principally British pop art such as Peter Blake and Peter Phillips, as well as previous artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Amedeo Modigliani, and Marc Chagall.[14] His first individual exhibition took place in 1979, in the gallery Buades de Madrid. In 1982, Menéndez Pelayo International University exhibited a sample of his work. Two years later, he became one of the best-selling artists of Arco [es] '84.[15] However, one of his cartoon strips, loaded with political allusions to Blas Piñar, Franco, Marx, and Mao, was the basis of an attack by People's Alliance on the magazine where it had been published, Madriz, as well as on the City Council of Madrid, which had subsidized it.[16]

After abandoning comics halfway through the 1980's, he devoted himself mostly to painting, holding exhibitions in places such as Amsterdam, Paris, Angoulême, Geneva, Bali, New York City, and Madrid (Centro Cultural de la Villa, 1985; Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, 1991). In 1984, he participated in a collective exhibition in Barcelona's Fundació Joan Miró.

He also created more film posters, such as the one for Almódovar's Law of Desire (1987), and in his final period designed title pages for the Spanish edition of Rolling Stone. The New Yorker hired him on November 22, 1993 for one of their covers.[17]

His work has been collected in books such as Dibujos (1982), Barcelona By Night (1982), París-Madrid (1985), El difícil arte de mentir (1986), Libro blanco (1990), and Ars morundi (1990).[18]

He died in Madrid on 7 September 2018 at the age of sixty.

Commemorative plaque at the cite of Ceesepe's former studio in Madrid

References

  1. [1]
    Glez, Montero (15 September 2018). "¡Viva Ceesepe!". eldiario.es (in Spanish).
  2. [2]
    Ceesepe (1958-2018) - RTVE.es (in Spanish), 14 September 2018, archived from the original on 7 May 2019
  3. [3]
    "Ceesepe". www.art-madrid.com.
  4. [4]
    Ianko López (7 September 2018). "Ceesepe: ¿La movida? No quiero tener nada que ver ni con Alaska, ni con Mario, ni con McNamara". www.revistavanityfair.es (in Spanish).
  5. [5]
    Vila, Jordi Costa (24 May 2018). Cómo acabar con la contracultura: Historia subterránea de España (1970-2016) (in Spanish). Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial España. ISBN 9788430618446.
  6. [6]
    Javier de Juan (7 September 2018). "Ceesepe, patrimonio de todos". abc (in Spanish).
  7. [7]
    Fernando Castro Flórez (7 September 2018). "Muere Ceesepe: el último viaje de un náufrago de la movida madrileña". abc (in Spanish).
  8. [8]
    González Férriz, Ramón (2012). La revolución divertida : cincuenta años de política pop (Primera edición ed.). Barcelona. ISBN 978-84-9992-239-3. OCLC 933387217.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. [9]
    Pose, Germán (14 May 2017). La mala fama. Almuzara. ISBN 9788416750306.
  10. [10]
    Ianko López (7 September 2018). "Ceesepe: ¿La movida? No quiero tener nada que ver ni con Alaska, ni con Mario, ni con McNamara". www.revistavanityfair.es (in Spanish).
  11. [11]
    Nichols, William J. (2013). Toward a Cultural Archive of la Movida : Back to the Future. Fairleigh Dickinson. ISBN 978-1-306-17130-4. OCLC 864746429.
  12. [12]
    Fernández-Santos, Elsa (27 July 2018). "La contracultura y nosotros, que la quisimos tanto". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  13. [13]
    Ceesepe (1958-2018) - RTVE.es (in Spanish), 14 September 2018, archived from the original on 7 May 2019
  14. [14]
    "Adiós a Ceesepe, "el Toulouse Lautrec" de la Movida que acabó repudiándola". El Español (in Spanish). 8 September 2018. Retrieved 6 June 2022.
  15. [15]
    Ceesepe entrevista en La Edad de Oro del Pop Español, retrieved 6 June 2022
  16. [16]
    "Ceesepe". lambiek.net. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
  17. [17]
    "Las mejores obras de Ceesepe, el artista que pintó la movida". El Español (in Spanish). 7 September 2018. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
  18. [18]
    "Muere Carlos Sánchez, Ceesepe". La Vanguardia (in Spanish). 7 September 2018. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
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