Chema Cobo. CV / BIO

Tarifa (Cádiz, 1952)

In 1975 he held his first individual exhibition at the Buades gallery in Madrid. With the entry of the eighties, he moved away from the assumptions of his early days and connected with international movements such as Neo-Expressionism and the Trans-avant-garde. In 1981 he was an artist-in-residence at P.S. 1 in New York and participated in both the XVI Bienal de Sao Paulo and the Salón de los 16, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid. In 1982 he participated in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and a year later he was invited to various exhibitions in Europe and the United States, highlighting the one called "Recent European paintings" at the Salomon R. Guggenheim in New York. During this period he was able to show his work for the first time at the Zolla Lieberman Gallery in Chicago. The eighties followed with a series of solo shows in Seattle, Boston, Milan, Rome, Madrid, Madrid, Bern, and Nagoya (Japan). Noteworthy is the one held in 1987 at The Mezzanine Gallery, belonging to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the first of his solo exhibitions in 1988 at the Charles Cowles Gallery, also in New York.

Throughout the 1990s he continued exhibiting with his American galleries and was visiting professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the NY Art School in New York. He made numerous exhibitions throughout Europe, highlighting in Spain the one entitled 'El Laberinto de la Brújula', developed in 1998 at the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art in Seville (CAAC) and presented the following year at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid. . Another exhibition that transcended at the national level was ‘Salta a la vista’ which collected works on paper from 1974 to 2001, without forgetting all those periodicals in his gallery in Madrid, the Antonio Machón Gallery.

In 2009 he exhibited ‘Out of Frame’ at the Contemporary Art Centre of Málaga (CAC) followed by a series of exhibitions in galleries and museums that collected latent lines of research in his more than 40 years of work. He has recently exhibited in Barcelona ‘Nothing to say’ at the Miguel Marcos Gallery, and also the show entitled ‘Ace in the hole’ at the Juan Silió de Santander Gallery. Finally, in January 2018 he premiered the exhibition ‘La vertu tue’ made specifically for the French Alliance of Malaga around a recurring theme in his work: the French Revolution. And in June 2018 he inaugurated the exhibition ‘The Clamor of the Flies’ at the Cicus in Seville, a very personal journey through his work on paper from the beginning until now. He has just resumed his work with the Il Ponte Contemporanea Gallery in Rome where he has inaugurated the exhibition ‘Exit Strategy: Via di Fuga’. Chema Cobo starts from conceptual assumptions and channels them through painting. In 2021 he inaugurated an exhibition at the Casa Brenan in Malaga entitled 'En le Reino de las Penumbras', where he recreates Brenan's universe in a series of large watercolors, following in the footsteps of the British Hispanicist through books by he.

In parallel, he builds his books of aphorisms (Amnesia I and II) with which he nurtures his work and roots the entire universe of his images, thoughts and written phrases.

1979 Grant from the Ministry of Culture, Madrid. 1980 Grant from the Juan March Foundation, Madrid.

1981-82 Grant from the Hispanic-North American Committee. Artist in Residence, at P.S. 1, New York, N.Y. 1994 Andalusia Prize for Plastic Arts.

2009 Francisco de Goya Painting Prize of the Villa de Madrid.

Visiting professor at the School of Art of the Art Institute of Chicago. Northwestern University, Chicago.

N.Y. Art School, New York. Circle of Fine Arts, Madrid. Institute of Aesthetics, Madrid.

Faculty of Fine Arts of La Laguna, Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Winchester School of Art, Barcelona.

Faculty of Fine Arts of Cuenca.

VII Workshop on Contemporary Art, Málaga. Faculty of Fine Arts of Malaga.

Seville is Talent Workshop, Valentin de Madariaga Foundation, Seville

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg. Chase Manhattan Bank Collection, New York. Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

University of Chicago, Chicago. The Art Institute, Chicago

The Shore Collection, Cincinnati Twigg-Smith Collection, Los Angeles.

Frederick Weisman Collection, Los Angeles. Madison Art Center, Madison.

Kunstmuseum, Bern.

Fundazione Lucio Amelio. Institute for Contemporary Art, Naples. Nazionale d’Arte Contemporanea Gallery, Rome.

Tom Patchett Collection, Santa Monica, California. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle.

Milwaukee Art Museum.

Grand Valley State University ,, Grand Rapids, Michigan Deutsche Bank.

Orange County Museum of Art, California, USA Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid. Caja Madrid Foundation.

Ca Foundation