ESPALIÚ, PEPE
(Córdoba, 1955–1993)
The Córdoba artist Pepe Espaliú studied applied arts and crafts and fine arts in Seville and psychology in Barcelona. In 1977 he moved to Paris, where he studied, worked and attended the seminars of Lacan. In 1986 he settled in Seville and, together with other artists, contributed to the art magazine Figura and formed a collective that would exhibit at the gallery La Máquina Española, first in Seville and then in Madrid. From 1988, Madrid became his permanent home, although he travelled frequently and spent various stints in places like New York, Rome, Mexico and Amsterdam. Between 1991 and 1993 he ran workshops at Arteleku in San Sebastian, the venue to which he would donate his library and, in 1992, organise the first Carrying, an action in which a chain of couples transported in their arms a barefoot AIDS sufferer (he himself), without letting him touch the floor. This action would subsequently be repeated in Madrid. His relatively small body of work, made between 1986 and 1993, until his premature death from AIDS, contains numerous literary references as well as allusions to the identity crises he experienced due to his homosexuality and to the disease that afflicted him.
