MADRID.- Yesterday, the Director of the Museo Reina Sofía, Manuel Segade; the Councillor for Culture of the Cabildo of Tenerife and President of TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, José Carlos Acha; the Director of the Museo Néstor, Daniel Montesdeoca; and the exhibition curator, Juan Vicente Aliaga, officially presented Néstor Reencountered, the new temporary exhibition at the Museo Reina Sofía. The show is organized in close collaboration with TEA Tenerife Espacio de las Artes and the Museo Néstor in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

The exhibition offers a retrospective re-reading of the figure of Néstor Martín Fernández de la Torre (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1887–1938), a Canarian artist who worked across a wide range of disciplines. From painting and murals to theatrical sets and costume design for eminent figures such as Manuel de Falla and Antonia Mercé y Luque, known as La Argentina, the exhibition brings together over one hundred works that remain relatively unknown outside the Canary Islands.

Known simply as Néstor, the artist navigated the visual languages of Modernism, Decadentism, and Symbolism, developing a body of work imbued with sensuality and a deep fascination with androgynous forms—an aesthetic that challenged the conservative moral standards of his time.

Born into a wealthy family in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1887, Néstor began a prolific period in Barcelona in 1907, where he became part of the city’s vibrant modernist circles. He formed close friendships with artists such as Mariano Andreu, Laura Albéniz, and Ismael Smith, and held his first solo exhibition at Sala Parés in 1909, earning praise from leading critics like Eugenio d’Ors.

In 1913, he moved to Madrid, where he engaged with cultural figures such as Valle- Inclán and Federico García Lorca, and caught the attention of a young Salvador Dalí, who was fascinated by the proto-Surrealist boldness of his work. His travels to London, Paris, and Brussels exposed him to the aesthetic worlds of the Pre Raphaelites and artists like James Whistler, Gustave Moreau, and Franz von Stuck.

In 1924, he unveiled the first works from what would become the central series of his career: Poema del Atlántico (Poem of the Atlantic) and Poema de la Tierra (Poem of the Earth). These epic, large-scale paintings—part of an ambitious project devoted to the four elements—were left unfinished due to his untimely death in 1938. The compositions reflect his vision of the fusion of male and female bodies, enriched with baroque fantasy, elements of Canarian flora and fauna, and a personal form of Surrealism infused with Masonic and esoteric symbolism.

Upon returning to his native city in 1934, Néstor became a passionate advocate for Canarian culture and identity. He coined the concept of tipismo—a celebration of local character and tradition—as part of a broader cultural project. This included the design and construction of the Parador de Tejeda and the landscape series Visiones de Gran Canaria (Visions of Gran Canaria, 1928–1934), which combined the bold perspectives of New Objectivity with an idealized vision of the island’s natural beauty.