Carlos Chevilly de los Ríos (1918-1978) An approach to his artwork from restauration

Abstract

The aim of this article is to get to know the artwork of Carlos Chevilly de los Ríos, an artist from the Canary Islands, from a conservation and restoration point of view, through the documentation of previous studies and the methodology applied in consolidating the textile support in the work of the artist. The study carried out on the basic structure of the painting (support, preparatory substratum and layer of paint), the knowledge of the application technique used by the artist and the state of conservation has served to establish the essential foundation, which gave us our election criteria for the conservation and restoration treatments. Faced with the need to reline, we focus our theory on choosing a thermo-plastic adhesive and using a synthetic fabric and for this purpose we have a low-pressure hot table to avoid any humidity issues. We realise the need to identify the material (cotton) used by the artist in order to establish the treatment, together with the causes of the serious deterioration and changes, prompted mainly by Xylophages insects.