Ocaña Exhibition Center. Old Convent of San Francisco
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The Old Convent of San Francisco dates back to the 17th century. It was restored as a result of a cession agreement between the Archbishopric of Seville and the Town Council of Cantillana, in response to the municipal initiative to rescue this building for social and cultural uses. Here is the largest permanent exhibition of the pictorial work of the famous local painter José Pérez Ocaña.
The building, as a container for the museum institution, creates an enclosure with its own personality that combines the essence of its past with the advances used in the exhibition discourse of the present. It is located in the church of the former Franciscan convent of Cantillana, a 17th century building, diaphanous and austere, which after its desacralisation, although it has been stripped of altarpieces, images and ornaments, maintains the structure and function of a sacred enclosure.
José Pérez Ocaña, born in Cantillana on 24 March 1947, was a self-taught artist, performer, anarchist, Andalusian activist and an icon of Franco's resistance during the transition to democracy, a key figure of his time. He died on 18 September 1983 in the same Cantillana where he was born. The centre has a total of 54 paintings by the artist, in addition to photographs, sculptures and exhibition posters, as well as personal objects and videos of works and installations by the genius of Cantillana.