Artist: Cesar Santos

Following a sell-out show in Milan in 2023, Robilant+Voena presents an exhibition of new paintings by Cuban-American artist Cesar Santos. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States since moving beyond figuration in 2022, and presents his unique and intuitive aesthetic approach to abstraction. In R+V’s new gallery space on East 66th Street, the exhibition features over twenty of the artist’s signature paintings that show his mastery of form, harmony and colour.

Showing across four rooms of R+V’s new gallery space, the pieces range in media and scale, from ink and charcoal drawings and acrylic on paper, to ambitious works in oil stretching over 2m in height.

The title Manuscripts refers to the improvisation that begins each painting, emphasising the raw and organic nature of Santos’ practice, as well as signaling that each artwork can be ‘read’ by viewers to ascertain its unique significance.

Across the exhibition, the works – several of which explore the formal properties of impasto – demonstrate the artist’s organic approach to painting, creating discrete ecosystems which emerge as he paints, often building layers over several days. These paintings offer a distillation of Santos’ innate and spontaneous relationship with the world.