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Cesar J. SANTANDER

Cesar J. SANTANDER

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

1998

oil over acrylic on masonite
36 x 48 inches
CJS 1

Summary

Cesar Santander was born near Cadiz, Spain in 1947, and came to the U.S. at the age of 5, where he grew up in Brooklyn.  After high school he determined himself on a career in art, and without prior art experience, earned admission, on the basis of an exceptional academic background, to the Pratt Institute, where he began to develop his extraordinary technique.  Since that time, Sanander came upon his favorite subjects—antique toys and dolls.

Using a layering of paintbrush and airbrush, Santander creates a colorful, perfectly fantastic world of toy life, the toys grouped for implied animation.  His object is perfection: to “make it as photographic, representative, and as true to the original as possible, but then to enhance and imbue (the images) with a higher level of intensity”.  Marching, galloping on horseback, whirring and chugging, these painted, fantastic clowns, cowboys, bears, monkeys, animated creatures half-human, half-animal, present a microcosmos to delight adult and child alike.

Santander has exhibited his work extensively, in Canada, in New York, and London; his works are featured in corporate collections in the U.S., Canada, and England.