Between painting and sculpture in contemporary art
Maite Cantó Equisoain was born in 1973. She graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the UPV, University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, specialising in Design (1998). Her professional beginnings were in advertising and as a graphic designer for the magazine Altube, where she worked for five years (1991-1996).
She lives between Pamplona and Vitoria, where she is studying for a Master’s Degree in New Technologies Applied to Design, organised by the ARGILAN Centre (against social exclusion) of the Basque Government. She develops her professional career for several companies, such as Euskaltel, El Naturalista, Gas Natural and public bodies (in the Technology Park of Bilbao and Alava, in the Euskalduna Conference Centre in Bilbao and in the Basque Government); she also collaborates with the NGO Fundación Anesvad for the right to health, and makes several works for different campaigns against gender violence.
Maite Cantó’s artistic work has been exhibited in various art galleries such as the s2estudio Gallery, the Caja Vital Foundation in Vitoria, the Citadel in Pamplona and important museums such as the Thyssen Museum in Malaga and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. In the latter, he won the first prize “Design Fedrigoni Milan” with the Audiovisual Pack designed for Armani and presented in this museum.
His works range from paintings, three-dimensional paintings to sculptures. In the year 2008
Maite Cantó, Reflejos1, 2008, mixed media on canvas, 81 x 100 cm
The successive collection, Colectivo H2O (2009), expresses the rhythm of urban life that turns the individual into an impersonal automaton. Cantó criticises the masses and current events through painting, with cold colours that symbolise sadness and loneliness, while the forms blend together to create undefined shadows:
“The technique responds to influences from photography, the profiles of people in movement disappear in -our view. The technique also reproduces the basic element of life, playing at constructing and destroying the volumes at will. Water forms and deforms bodies that appear to be mouldable. The processes of sedimentation, dripping, cracking… are a critique, they reproduce the way we treat our basic resources, our environment […] H2O Collective is a particular reflection on our future. A matter seen as a fragment of reality, within a perishable existence due to its own condition”.
Maite Cantó, Grúas H2O, 2009, técnica mixta sobre lienzo, 130 x 190 cm
Another pictorial collection by Maite Cantó is CºS.YAGO (2010), which shows the artist’s personal vision of the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. The colours are warmer and more vivid than in previous series. Works such as CºS.YAGO viñasviana (2010) make us think of the first tests made by Edward Muybridge (1830-1904) to capture movement in photography.
The leitmotif of all his pictorial work is the representation of feelings and memories that combine to create elusive and uncertain contours.
Maite Cantó, CºS.YAGO viñasviana, 2010, mixed media on canvas, 130 x 162 cm
Silicone21 (2014) is a tribute to nature, so roses are simulated in relief to create a unique optical effect, with monochrome inks: the viewer becomes the true protagonist of the work. The technique used tries to achieve results close to the field of industrial design, with an explosion of pure colours.
Maite Cantó, Silicone21 Módulo 3 de rosas magenta, 2014, silicone on polycarbonate, 130 x 130 cm
In 2017, Maite Cantó created the Shield series using fibreglass and resin. With these works the artist wants to express the shields created by human beings to protect themselves from pain: “colour is mixed in a symbolic way, with pure and bright colours, in apparently weak, imperfect and broken structures. Their apparent fragility encloses forms that break geometry to become more organic, more human”.
Maite Cantó, Tracio Shield, 2008, fibreglass, 60 x 50 x 12 cm
The peak of Maite Cantó’s three-dimensional work is reached in her last two collections: Nest (2017-18) and Valentina (2020-23).
Nest tells us about the daily life, routine and habits of each one of us: “Nest is the evolutionary formal result of my previous stage “pictorreliefs” and defines all the micro worlds that each person creates around us […] Nest are connections between people, like a network of energy that is transmitted through gesture as something real that moves the world and transforms it” writes the artist.
Colour is the true protagonist of the works, extolling the value and meaning of forms, to represent emotions, ideas, feelings or, perhaps, memories, embracing conceptual art. For example, Yellow Nest (2017) is a concave shape that resembles a cavity in the ground, while Fire Nest (2018) represents a ring of fire with red flaming tips. Horizon (2018) is dominated by the colour yellow with these glass fibres, which create a play that simulates the wind blowing through the grass.
Rose Nest (2018) is a flower with petals that spread out concentrically, leaving the centre empty. Nest is developed from a creative process started with Shield and is the result of a study of more than two years on the behaviour of resins, such as ecological resins, and the study of different types of glass fibres.
Maite Cantó, Yellow Nest, 2017, textile and resin, 115 x 80 x 25 cm
Maite Cantó, Fire Nest, 2018, resin and fibreglass, 140 x 140 x 30 cm
Maite Cantó, Horizon Nest, 2018, Tejido, resina y fibra de vidrio, 150 x 125 x 15 cm
Maite Cantó, Rose Nest (detail), 2018, resin and fibreglass, 150 x 150 x 40 cm
Finally, Valentina is a series of sculptures depicting women evoking Greek goddesses or the warrior women of legends, as an analogy to express the strength of women and denounce gender violence. The spectator is catapulted into a scenario of anguish, suffering and regeneration.
Maite Cantó, Valentina Reconstructs Her Wings, 2023, fireproof fibreglass yarn and eco resin, 180 x 50 x 50 cm
Maite Cantó, Valentina H2O, 2021, fireproof fibreglass yarn and eco resin, 190 x 50 x 50 cm
Valentina Reconstructs Her Wings (2023) shows a divinity with broken wings, who tries to regain her energy and emerge triumphant with this gracefully encircled pose. Valentina H2O (2021) is a mermaid-like woman emerging from the water “with a fearless gesture and her chin up in a haughty pose, arms back facing danger”.
Valentina Reborn (2023) represents Mother Earth during her metamorphosis, her hands transforming into roots as she tries to stand up.
Maite Cantó, Valentina ReBorn, 2023, fireproof fibreglass yarn and eco resin, 200 x 40 x 40 cm
We are waiting for you at Lanzarote Art Gallery to discover and admire the works of Maite Cantó Equisoain from our collection.
Aurora Argiolas
Art Historian
