News - Masters of Realism: Vanitas, Kunstkammer & Still Lifes

Stuart Lochhead Sculpture in London has announced that Masters of Realism: Vanitas, Kunstkammer & Still Lifes opens in July, presenting the work of celebrated artists Josep and Pere Santilari for the first time in the UK ...



Press Release



In the broad and varied landscape of contemporary art, the work of Josep and Pere Santilari
(b. 1959) stands out as something truly special. Based in Barcelona, the brothers, who are
also identical twins, have gained a reputation over the last three decades for their
meticulously rendered drawings and paintings which have dazzled audiences with their
remarkable technical mastery.



The exhibition will present recent works by the artists, with an emphasis on drawings. There
will be a group of superb Vanitas pieces, a subject that has long interested them and which is
particularly popular with their followers, alongside a selection of exquisite floral still lifes
(both paintings and drawings), whose titles make reference to the French specialist of the
genre, Henri Fantin-Latour. The show will include a fascinating series of drawings that quote
works by such earlier masters as Parmigianino and Rembrandt, made partly in response to
the academic tradition in which the Santilaris themselves were trained. We are also excited
to show for the first time a group of drawings inspired by the theme of the Kunstkammer
(Cabinet of Wonders), which signals a new direction for the artists.

If the subject matter of the works in the exhibition reveals the brothers’ interest in more
traditional genres of art, it is the extraordinary technique they employ that places their
practice in a more contemporary setting. Their drawings, in particular, reveal a mesmerising
attention to detail and near-obsessive description of objects that leaves the viewer wondering
how such images are created. The answer is a long, painstaking process. The brothers work
from digital photographs of their carefully arranged compositions and then translate the
image onto the paper, literally inch by inch. They use a wide range of pencils with different
values to build up a surface texture they call “the skin of the drawing”. The “skin” of the
resulting images almost defies belief, with their immaculate surfaces inviting repeated
inspection.

Equally striking is the studio practice of the twins. They work side-by-side, often using many
of the same objects in their compositions. They do not, however, collaborate and yet their
works are largely indistinguishable on stylistic grounds with only the signatures revealing who
created the finished art work. As Timothy J. Standring has written, this approach may
“…reflect their compassionate adherence to each other as identical twins: They are
competitive to the extent that their competitiveness enables each to produce the best that
he can, not entirely for his own selfish satisfaction, but altruistically for their collective
satisfaction and to move forward as a team.” (‘Virtue of Discipline’, in Ineffability, 2020, p.
24).

Alongside these contemporary visions of vanitas, there will be a very special
group of Memento Mori art works from the Renaissance and Baroque period, exhibited by
Georg Laue, Kunstkammer Ltd.


This exhibition is organised in partnership with Artur Ramon Art, Barcelona and Warner- Johnson Art Advisory, London.

Stuart Lochhead Sculpture was opened in 2018 and displays the best in all media from antiquity to the 20th century. Stuart handles the work of some of the most celebrated artists whilst also championing less known but equally fascinating sculptors.


Masters of Realism: Vanitas, Kunstkammer & Still Lifes, by Josep & Pere Santilari (b. 1959)
runs from Sunday 3rd July - Friday 15th July 2022 at Stuart Lochhead Sculpture, Upper Floor, 35 Bury Street, London SW1Y 6AU. Please visit the website for more details.

Images - 

JOSEP SANTILARI (Badalona 1959) D. the watercolorist, 2020, 2018-2019, Pencil on cardboard, 23 x 28 cm

JOSEP SANTILARI (Badalona 1959) Vanitas. The greed, 2018. Pencil on cardboard, 21.5 x 21.5 cm

JOSEP SANTILARI (Badalona 1959) The topic, Fantin-Latour series, 2020, Oil on canvas, 35 x 35 cm

RENAISSANCE MEMENTO MORI Janus head, German or Low Countries, 16th century, Boxwood, Height 5 cm, Photo credit: Georg Laue, Kunstkammer Ltd., London