Overview

His painting is movement, an unmistakable icon of the cultural revolution that was born in the Spanish capital in those wonderful 80s: Chenel, Tierno, 'Madriz', music and comics, the night and life.

Possessing a very personal and recognisable voice and a splendid mastery of drawing and colour, Javier de Juan became one of the most present and active artists in the field of drawing and painting in the eighties. In the early 1980s he began his artistic career as a painter and illustrator, at that time very much imbricated in the assumptions of the so-called New Spanish Figuration, made up of a series of very diverse artists, but at the same time with some common features - fundamentally a high figurative, colourist and narrative temperature.

His studies at the School of Architecture were to leave an unquestionable mark on his works, largely centred on urban themes, reflecting different aspects of the city, its buildings and streets, its dynamism, and above all the different archetypes and human genealogies that inhabit and populate his compositions.
 
Over the years, although his aesthetic, stylistic and expressive interests have logically evolved, being always very interested in the dissemination of his images through serial work, and even for some time now in the use of new languages and creative strategies, including video and digital processes, the fact is that a series of formal and conceptual features exist and are maintained in him that define and give meaning to his own voice as an artist.

Javier de Juan is above all a splendid draughtsman with an innate ability to tell stories through images. His technique is fresh, agile, clear and simple. With few lines and graphics he is capable of constructing scenes, situations, moments and, of course, emotions. His characters, men and women, are always recognisable and are animated by a special liveliness, full of energy, registers, movements and also sensuality.

Despite the fact that in his pieces the line and the graphics have their own voice that can be heard clearly, the truth is that Javier is an artist who manages to make the chromatic registers also present their candidature as important elements in his work. Colours with a marked warm texture, oranges, yellows, reds, which in turn are tempered and modulated with other shades closer to the cold kingdom of blues and greens.

He is an artist whose imaginary is nourished and supplied to a large extent by the fauna and flora that populate the diverse and variegated environment of the city. The streets, the cars, the passers-by, the illuminated signs, the buildings form a dynamic totuum revolutum and compose before our eyes an active and energetic urban song.

An artist who generates narratives and visual stories full of inventiveness and winks can never be without the warp and weft of the imaginative. Images yes, but undoubtedly images that are the offspring of his fertile imagination.
Works
Biography

Spanish artist, an outstanding figure in relation to the plastic image of the Madrid movida (movida madrileña) and the new figuration of the eighties in Spain.

Javier de Juan is a Spanish artist born in Linares, Jaén, on 13 September 1958. His work and artistic career span several decades and are characterised by his participation in the artistic scene of the movida madrileña and the new figuration in the eighties, as well as by his evolution towards a more intimate and reflective approach in the nineties. Throughout his career, he has worked as a painter, draughtsman, engraver, muralist and digital artist. He has also dabbled in writing, graphic design and animated film.

In the 1980s, he was considered an urban artist and a painter of the Spanish New Figuration, with works that reflected the urban life of the Movida era in Madrid. He also participated in important magazines of the time and founded Port Said Ediciones, a publishing house specialising in artists' posters. In the late 1980s, he moved to Morocco and then to New York, which influenced his work and artistic style. In the 1990s, his work became more introspective and symbolic, with a focus on large-format works that evoke timeless, mixed-race worlds. In the 2000s, he experimented with new media, installations and three-dimensional works. He also ventured into animated film. In the 2010s, he began working with video projections and digital technologies, combining analogue and digital in his work.

Javier de Juan has received awards and distinctions throughout his career, such as the National Printmaking Award in 1995 and the Pop Eye Award for his career in the visual arts in 2017. His work can be found in various collections and museums, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Fundación Telefónica. He has also published several books and has participated in multidisciplinary projects in the field of visual arts. His work encompasses a wide range of approaches over the years, always with a recognisable style of his own, reflecting his evolution as an artist over time.

Video
Exhibitions
Publications

Public collections:

Museo ABC, Madrid /Museo Insular de La Palma / Geneve Hotel de Ville Collection, Switzerland. /Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla, Spain / Lindner Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany / Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Conde Duque, Madrid, Spain / Museo del Grabado. Marbella, Málaga, Spain / Fundación Telefónica, Spain /Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain / Banco de España, Madrid, Spain / Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid, Spain  /Fundación Argentaria, Madrid, Spain / Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona, Spain  / Fundación Tabacalera, Madrid, Spain / Euroforum, El Escorial, Madrid, Spain / Calcografía Nacional, Madrid, Spain / Fundación Juan March, Madrid, Spain / Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain / Fundación Aena, Madrid, Spain / Ayuntamiento de Los Llanos de Aridane, La Palma, Spain

Press
Art Fairs