"At Cassis, the pebbles, fish,

rocks under a magnifying glass

the salt of the sea and the sky

made me forget about human pretensions

invite me to turn my back

on the chaos of our goings on

showed me an eternity in the little harbor waves

which repeat themselves

without repeating themselves"

Otto Wols

(1913-1951 ) 

It may have been the trees in “El Prado”, a neighborhood in Montevideo where Santiago spent his childhood, that, with their intertwined branches engraved an unforgettable image on which the artist builds his world.

The alchemy of memory has transformed these branches, losing their particular features to become a symbol.

Like the circles formed in still water by the last rain drops, this original symbol echoes, overlaps, expands and builds an endless number of mysterious bonds that breathe and beat on the surface of the painting.

In this abstract language, color sometimes brings back faraway figurative references as in “Atardecer sobre el lago”, where the symmetric orange mass is evocative of the reflection of the sun on the water, or as in “Mediodía”, where the black weave suggests tree branches floating in a summer afternoon.

The map, taken as an abstract representation of the bonds that make up our world, is often chosen by Estellano as a way to deploy his symbol and build an image greatly influenced by graphics, an essential part of his artistic training.

Santiago is a creator of powerful and subtle abstractions; a contemporary Tachist.  

In short, he is an artist who transforms reality into plastic expressions reflecting the vibrations of the soul.

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Alexandra Roux,

March 2012

agap, Buenos Aires, Argentina