Sketch for "The Card Players"Architect Carlos Pérez Franco's first professional drawings were socio-political caricatures commissioned by a newspaper in his hometown of Montevideo, Uruguay. His exploration of the visual arts was further inspired after many nights observing original members of the Tórres-Garcia Southern School at work in their downtown studio. During subsequent university studies, Carlos honed his drawing and painting skills until a triple career path in the visual arts, architectural design and academia became inevitable.

While Pérez Franco is best known for painting abstracted figures and compelling compositions featuring distorted planes and alternative viewpoints, his skills shined first and foremost through fluid sketches where his signature aesthetic concepts of dual purpose were first explored. Drawing remained a daily staple throughout the artist's life. To understand and appreciate Carlos' entire oeurve, viewers must start with his drawings.

The contemporary art field is known for creating elaborate names for emerging tangents. One popular trend is expressed as "Neo-Figurative Post-Abstraction," a description for raw drawings and paintings that upon first viewing appear to parallel the de-skilling movement. The collector who coined the phrase, Neils Kantor, actually suggests the opposite: NFPA is a turn away from de-skilling back to technical expertise and physical craft, a preference for work that is neither process-only, contrived formal abstraction nor strictly conceptual. Being thoughtfully considered and physically worked, the art succeeds through underlying aesthetic qualities beyond its simplistic strokes. Kantor capsulizes collector appeal for neo-figurative, post-abstraction art as work "driven by the hand of the artist."

We couldn't agree more, especially since Pérez Franco explored similar liberal & gestural artforms as early as the 50s and continued to incorporate them unabated for over 60 years. Taken in the context of recent trends, it's safe to say that Pérez Franco's drawings were decades ahead of their time alongside a fair number of mid-century experimental artists doing similar work, many of whom remain influential to this day. The only element missing during their period was the fancy moniker.

Pérez Franco first experimented with free-form figurative abstraction during his first world tour upon graduation as a professional architect. Time was tight while bouncing between nations on rented buses. The artist sketched furiously to record every sight and cultural clue. These fast and free studies over a year long tour sparked the emergence of a style based on suggestion and inference rather than realism. Even though he could draw realistic portraits in his sleep, Pérez Franco preferred to use his stripped down process for focus and clarity rather than fill pictorial space with superfluous clutter. For decades, Pérez Franco employed this uncanny ability to record substantial detail - both visible and implied - with minimal strokes, not unlike later bodies of work by artists such as Picasso, Matisse and Tamayo who searching similarly for focus, purity and integrity.

Some of Carlos' early drawings were completed without removing the pen from the paper, in part so he wouldn't have to take his eye off the passing scenes but also to add depth and breadth to even the simplest compositions.

Equally important for a full understanding of Pérez Franco's artwork is the influence of a parallel career as a professor of architectural design. Clues to his academic background are readily apparent throughout his art: Intricate compositions include masterful control of positive and negative space. Every line — as random as some appear — has a purpose. In Carlos' case, often two or more purposes! Dislodged vantage points free viewers to explore almost as if they're riding outside their bodies. Coherent forms and objects are scaled expertly, as one might expect from an architect. Nowhere are these aesthetic considerations and manipulation of picture planes more evident than in the initial sketches and more elaborate drawings.

Sketch for "Homenaje al Momo"Carlos always felt that the attractiveness of a building was fundamental but that the quality of human interaction with the structure and its created space was equally important. He often explored this duality using people and objects simultaneously as structure, as subject content and as compositional elements. In so doing, Pérez Franco demonstrated one of his key concepts: Humans in communities are like buildings in cities. Both can be positive and functional, all the more so through collaboration, support and respect.

While embarking on the creation of a thorough catalogue of the remaining work in the Pérez Franco estate, we encountered hundreds of sketches, some meant for sale, others for plotting a pictorial chronology of the artist's career. It's interesting to pair some of these original sketches with the paintings produced from these studies as we've done below.

More to follow as we continue to unravel the treasure we proudly present...

CPF Estate

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The Carlos Pérez Franco Estate proudly offers an extraordinary collection of drawings by the renowned architect and artist dating back to his graduation world tour in the 50s. Below are a selection of the larger drawings. We will include more as they are catalogued and available for acquisition.

Apart from some solo shows for which Uruguayan artist Carlos Perez Franco prepared specific sets of work, the artist generally worked in recurring themes rather than readily-defined series. Major themes throughout his career include abstract figurative portraiture, urban and rural "paisajes," marinsescapes, "el cotidiano" slices of daily life, the interaction of families, music, futbol and Uruguayan neighborhood street life. As an architect by profession, it is natural that image, presence, form, color and space all play vital roles in Perez Franco compositions. His works often ask as many questions as they answer. Indeed, one of the joys of viewing Perez Franco paintings beyond their aesthetic qualities is to decipher their elements, his visual code and unique iconography. To fully understand the depth of his perception and the power of his work, one must determine why he chose to include or exclude certain objects in a particular work and why they are depicted in a specific manner. Palette, relative placement, level of detail, expression and stroke technique offer clues to the viewer.

Even in Perez Franco's minimalist compositions, there is always something of intrigue that hints at the concepts being explored within the context of the overall composition. It's interesting to note that the artist was years ahead of his time in many works where he used a very contemporary structure of using loose spacing, alternative perspectives and partial elements to infer the entirety of the content and context rather than feed the viewer everything with all-over painting. Elements became parts of visual puzzles. Through various combinations of suggestion and implication, both complimentary and conflicting interpretations may often be derived.

Perez Franco wanted viewers to think about the concepts he explored as much as the visual images themselves. His canon of work did precisely that.

Watercolors and Mixed	Oils and Acrylics	Drawings

Click image or title to enter sub-menu of works divided by medium.

Perez Franco continued to paint or draw each and every day with the same passion, vigor and attention to detail.

Superb late-20th and new 21st century works are available. We are especially enthusiastic about his latest paintings on canvas (2007-2015) and a substantial collection of watercolors produced between 2009 and 2015. This is the first time since the mid 80s that Perez Franco watercolors have been made available for purchase as well as a collection of excellent small and mid-sized drawings that allow those who may not have the resources to purchase a CPF painting the ability to own an original drawing at very reasonable price points. With a background in professional and academic architecture long before AutoCad, it comes as no surpirse to us that some observers consider Perez Franco's ink and multi-media blends on paper to be his finest work. The Perez Franco estate has an ample selection from which to choose.

Additional information can be found throughout this website and by contacting us.

Perez Franco often worked with various media and styles simultaneously, utilizing artistc impulse rather than a structured approach to creating groups of work. It is difficult to categorize works chronologically since he frequently revisited previous techniques and themes with fresh ideas. Having worked with him on a daily basis for over 30 years, we are able to determine what works were completed in each period if that information is requested. We are sub-dividing Perez Franco works by theme and other variables to facilitate easier browsing. In the very near future, we will be adding a more sophisticated search & filter system and online commerce capabilities.

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