ORIENTATIVE
HISTORY
Agustín
Pontesta (San Sebastián, 1963) stands out for his intense path in
both his life and his artistic career. From an early age, the need to
express himself through painting woke up inside him, but it was
thanks to the artist Alfredo Bikondoa that he discovered his true
path. Since then he has not stopped working and evolving in parallel
to a particular and genuine way of understanding the world and his
surroundings.
At
the same time he discovered and became interested in Zen Buddhism and
its philosophy. For years he attended seminars and intensive
retreats. He also got to know Tibetan Buddhism through various lamas,
attending and participating in courses and retreats. Attended
conventions taught by the Dalai Lama himself, traveling to France,
India... During this time he studied and practiced oriental art,
Sumi-e, Japanese calligraphy.
He
lived for a time in London, motivated by Victorian painting,
especially the work of the painter William Turner. In San Sebastian
he was a teacher of drawing and painting.
A
lover of open spaces and remote places, a keen reader of books by
travellers and classic explorers since childhood, Agustín fulfilled
his dreams by traveling for several months and up to a year, always
alone and with a one-way ticket, making up his itinerary as he went
along, has been in remote parts of the planet such as the Amazon
rainforest, the Andes, deserts such as the Atacama in Chile, the Thar
in India, Turkey, Jordan or Israel, the great expanses of Patagonia,
Tierra del Fuego, the Himalayas (base camps of Everest, of the
Annapurna...)... He has made the Camino de Santiago several times in
almost all the variants known in Spain in an integral and
uninterrupted way, one of them walking for two months back and forth.
Agustín
Pontesta is a person with concerns who has adopted alternative
methods, faced with a conventional social system. Undoubtedly, this
life path, this introspective look which, at the same time, is open
to the world, somehow reinforces and permeates his artistic work,
appreciating the interiorization of landscapes bathed in a latent
spirituality.
Its
infinite landscapes, where the horizons seem absent or blurred with
an undefined sky, masses of people who are confused by a difficult
and extreme terrain. Some of his works sometimes seem to have
apocalyptic airs, at other times the textures and reliefs insinuate
rocks which make one think of seabeds. Private universes. Art and
science are allied.
His
biography is full of prizes from various contests and competitions
throughout Spain.
