Perico walks around his bright studio in Poble Nou with the calm agility of a cat. He is a friendly and attentive character, with a wise irony always at the forefront of his mind. We talk about the advantages and disadvantages of working alone, about Picasso's women - after all, Picasso was a bastard, but a bastard without malice -, about the tricks of the world of galleries and about the Japanese paper he uses to paint, so delicate that it can melt if you put it under running water.
And then he starts to paint and I continue to shoot, captivated by the elegance and fluidity of his movements with the brush.
Perico Pastor was born in la Seu d’Urgell in 1953. After a few years in Barcelona, studying matters which had nothing to do with Art and off which he dropped because he was always busy drawing, he left for New York in 1976. There he spent twelve years of comfortable bohemian life sponsored by freelance work done for The New York Times and other periodicals. That allowed him to do his own stuff, which, after a while attracted enough interest from gallerists to make a living from it –without ever abandoning illustration.
In 1980 he had his first show, at the Cornelia Street Café, in New York, and in 1983 his first gallery show at Madrid’s Galeria Estampa. Ever since, he has pursued painting and illustration and has showed his work in Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Sag Harbor, Miami, Pekin, Lleida…
He has lived in Barcelona since 1989, painting, publishing his illustrations in newspapers (El Pais, International Herald Tribune, La Vanguardia,) and in books (Amigos, El Pequeño Cuento, The Bible), and various projects.
Married, a father of four boys, a keen rower and cross-country skier, he is addicted to reading and music, and a competent cook.
