Mayoral

Antoni Tàpies i Puig, (Barcelona, 1923 - 2012) was a prominent Catalan artist renowned for his profound contributions to the field of contemporary art. Tàpies began his artistic journey at an early age and quickly established himself as a pioneer of the avant-garde movement. His distinctive style embraced elements of abstract expressionism, informalism, and mixed media, creating a unique visual language that challenged traditional artistic norms.

Tàpies explored profound themes of human existence, spirituality, and social consciousness through his artworks, often incorporating everyday objects and symbolic materials into his textured and tactile compositions. His work encompassed a wide range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, and ceramics, and he was celebrated for his ability to convey emotional depth and introspection through his powerful and thought-provoking pieces. Throughout his career, Tàpies received numerous international accolades, and his work is part of the most prestigious museums in the world, solidifying his status as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

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Antonio Saura (Huesca, 1930 – Cuenca, 1998) was a prominent Spanish painter and sculptor known for his profound and provocative works that explored themes of human suffering, anguish, and existentialism. Saura's artistic journey began with figurative expressionism before evolving into a distinctive style characterized by bold brushstrokes, distorted figures, and a haunting use of black and white. Drawing inspiration from artists like Francisco Goya and Pablo Picasso, Saura's oeuvre often delved into the depths of the human psyche, reflecting his own personal struggles and the sociopolitical climate of his time. Through his powerful visual language, Saura's art sought to confront and challenge viewers, leaving an indelible mark on the Spanish art scene and establishing him as a revered figure in modern art history.

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David Rodríguez Caballero (Palencia, 1970) is a prominent contemporary sculptor known for his work with metal, light, and geometric abstraction. His work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow, the Würth Museum in La Rioja, and the Oteiza Foundation Museum. In 2012, he held his first solo exhibition in Manhattan, which was met with critical and public acclaim.
He has participated in prestigious art fairs such as Art Basel (Miami and Hong Kong), ARCO (Madrid), MACO (Mexico), and the Armory Show (New York). He has received several awards, including the First International Printmaking Prize from Bodegas Dinastía Vivanco (2008), as well as other awards in Germany and Spain.
His work is part of international collections and institutions such as Repsol, the Coca-Cola Foundation, the Würth Museum, the Patio Herreriano Museum, and the National Institute of Statistics, among others.

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Artist based in Barcelona, they focus on exploring the possibilities of drawing and diagramming to construct political narratives and social critique, often taking the form of anthropographies of the political. In the artistic field, they adopt an ideologically militant position that recombines the intellectual traditions of the left into new pathways of thought that, both in form and substance, explore alternatives to more established trends. Their works, which often refer to historical and public figures from various fields, could be described as another instance of the critical and chronicling tradition of authors like Leech, Newton, Crumb, Forges, or Rius, and could be described as libellous, Goya-esque, or rococo, but considering they are framed within the issues and sensibilities of the turn of the millennium, addressing problems such as globalization and the mutations of capitalism, and influenced by the cycle of insurgencies ranging from the Spanish 15M to the Arab Springs and Occupy, feminism, and the Black Lives Matter movement. Their work has been presented in art galleries, museums, and independent spaces. In 2011, their series Econòmics was shown in a solo exhibition at MNCARS in Madrid, in 2015 they were part of the controversial exhibition La Bestia y el Soberano at MACBA in Barcelona, and recently they participated in the exhibition Vasos Comunicantes (2021), while the first chapter of their ideological history of the Western world system (Propaganda by the Act of Remembering) was presented in the Maquinaciones exhibition (2023) at MNCARS. They are currently working on their Ideology project, collaborating with colleagues from the decolonial field, exhibiting this and other works, and gradually compiling materials for an anthropology of the contemporary political class.

El Palomar is an art collective founded in 2013 by Ama Sánchez and Rafa Marcos. In continuous experimentation and hybridization of languages, they work across a wide variety of disciplines (video, performance, music, graphic art, painting, publishing, and curatorial projects), driving research and productions while articulating critical discourses on memory and the sense of trans and non-binary community through artistic practice.
They received the Miquel Casablancas Award in 2017, the Ojo Crítico Award in 2020, Amposta City Art Biennial (BIAM) and have participated in the 11th Berlin Biennale. In addition to their independent work, they have curated projects for Casal Solleric, A*Desk, and Kunsthaus Baselland.
Their work has been exhibited in museums such as Centro Párraga, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, MUSAC, CentroCentro, La Térmica, Frankfurter Kunstverein, NS-Dokumentationszentrum München, Patio Herreriano, MACBA, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art – New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art - Los Angeles, among others.
They have also participated in numerous actions, talks, and conferences related to their practice.

Élan d'Orphium's work proposes reinterpretations of gender in a broad sense through a conspiratorial interpretation of listening, gestures, and observations with species from other realms.
She graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid (2010-2014) with an Erasmus exchange at UAL Camberwell College (London, 2014). In 2018, she completed a Master's in Contemporary Art Research and Creation (MIAC).
She has participated in projects at Intermediae (Madrid, 2018), the programs ¿Pero… esto es arte? (2019) and Picnic sessions (2023 and 2025) at CA2M (Móstoles), Circuitos de Artes Plásticas of the Community of Madrid (Madrid, 2021), MataderoCrea at the Artistic Residences Center of Matadero (Madrid, 2021), Compañía Nacional de Teatro Clásico (Madrid, 2022), Fundación BilbaoArte (Bilbao, 2022), Schwules Museum (Berlin, 2022), Bulegoa z/b (Bilbao, 2022), Fundación Joan Brossa (Barcelona, 2023), INJUVE (2023), Concomitentes (2024), and GIRA at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2023-24). In 2025, she will receive an Art Grant from the Fundación Botín (Santander).

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Eulàlia Grau (Tarrasa, 1946) holds a significant role in a crucial period of transformation within Catalan and Spanish society. Her artistic endeavors, spanning from the 1970s onwards, center around feminist advocacy and critiquing the capitalist system by exploring the connections between well-being, consumption, and exploitation. A recurring feature in her work is the utilization of collage or photomontage techniques to challenge societal norms within everyday and familial contexts. Grau herself highlights the existence of racial undertones within certain feminist ideologies, particularly in the discriminatory treatment observed among individuals who possess specific sociopolitical and economic privileges. Through her art, she strives to shed light on the imperative need for feminism to combat racism, aligning with many contemporary demands and emphasizing that feminism must inherently encompass an anti-racist stance.

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Fernando Botero (Medillin, 1932– Mónaco, 2023) was a world-renowned Colombian painter and sculptor, best known for his distinctive artistic style known as Boterismo—characterized by exaggerated, voluminous figures and forms. Playful yet profound, his art explored themes of beauty, power, politics, and human nature, making him one of the most recognizable and influential Latin American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Jean Dubuffet (El Havre, 1901– París, 1985) was a major French artist best known as the leading advocate of Art Brut. He challenged academic aesthetics by drawing inspiration from children’s drawings, outsider art, and non-Western cultures. Dubuffet expressive works that redefined postwar contemporary art.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (New York, 1960 - 1988) was an American artist who rose to success during the 1980s as part of the Neo-expressionism movement. Basquiat first achieved notoriety in the late 1970s as part of the graffiti duo SAMO, writing enigmatic epigrams all over Manhattan, particularly where rap, punk, and street art coalesced into hip-hop culture. By the early 1980s, his paintings were being exhibited in galleries and museums internationally. At 21, Basquiat became the youngest artist to ever take part in Documenta in Kassel, Germany. At 22, he became one of the youngest to exhibit at the Whitney Biennial in NY.

Basquiat's art focused on dichotomies such as wealth versus poverty, integration versus segregation, and inner versus outer experience. He appropriated poetry, drawing, and painting; he married text and image, abstraction, figuration, and historical information mixed with contemporary critique. He used social commentary in his paintings as a tool for introspection and for identifying with the black community, as well as attacks on power structures and racism.

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Jordi Alcaraz (Calella, 1963) is a Catalan artist whose work merges sculpture, drawing, and installation to explore concepts of absence, transparency, and transformation. Rooted in classical traditions, his art pushes the boundaries of materiality using glass, ink, methacrylate, and mirrors. Through gestures, perforations, and reflections, he creates poetic spaces where the image is always on the verge of appearing or vanishing. Alcaraz has exhibited internationally and is featured in major collections such as MACBA, MFAH, and the Cisneros Fontanals Collection. His work resonates with surrealism and arte povera, yet remains profoundly unique.

José Pérez Ocaña (Cantillana, 1947 - Seville, 1983) was a key figure in the Barcelona countercultural movement of the 1970s. As an artist, activist, and performer, Ocaña became a symbol of freedom and dissidence during Spain’s Transition to democracy. His provocative personality and use of transformism broke social conventions of the time, although his popularity has often overshadowed the depth of his artistic work.

His creative practice —ahead of its time— included drawings, paintings, and papier-mâché sculptures, with a strong performative dimension. Ocaña anticipated contemporary artistic models based on identity, free bodily expression, and the fusion of art and life. His legacy remains essential to understanding art as a form of resistance and transformation.

Lúcia Prancha (1985, Lisbon) is an artist living and working in Barcelona. She graduated in Painting from FBAUL (2009, Portugal) and earned her Master of Fine Arts from CalArts – California Institute of the Arts (2015, USA). Her work has been exhibited at the 19 Crac in Montbéliard; Centro de Arte Oliva; Sesc-Pompeia, São Paulo; LACA – Los Angeles Contemporary Archive; Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen; Serralves Foundation, Porto; Galeria Dynamo, Porto; Galeria Leme, São Paulo; Berardo Museum, and the São Paulo Biennial. Her videos have been screened at the Portuguese Cinematheque; INTERSECCIÓN, A Coruña; Curtas Vila do Conde; Rencontres Internationales Nouveau Cinéma et Art Contemporain in Paris; and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. She is currently presenting HILDA, her latest solo exhibition, featuring sculpture and video, at the Pavilhão Branco in Lisbon. From September to November, she will be participating in an artist residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

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Marc Larré (Barcelona, 1978) studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona and at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York, where he studied film and video under the supervision of Walid Raad. He has had solo exhibitions at the Fundación Suñol (Barcelona), Centro Párraga (Murcia), Galería etHALL (Barcelona), La Capella (Barcelona), Fundación BBVA (Madrid), R.O. Proyectos (Madrid), Galería Rafael Ortíz (Sevilla), and Galería Estrany - de la Mota with Gerard Ortín. He has participated in group exhibitions at CRAC Puglia (Taranto), MAAT-Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (Lisbon), MACBA-Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (Barcelona), NCCA-The National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Moscow), Fabra & Coats (Barcelona), and Aarhus Art Building (Denmark), among others. He has recently received the Antoni Vila Casas Sculpture Prize, a Leonardo Grant for Scientific Research and Cultural Creation, as well as an Art for Change grant from the La Caixa Foundation (2022). He lives and works in Barcelona.

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Mari Chordà (Amposta, 1942) is a Catalan painter, poet and feminist activist. She studied at the Escola de Belles Arts de Barcelona, where she began to experiment with pictorial representations of the female body. In 1964 —a few years before the feminist art revolution that took place in the United States in the early 1970s— Chordà started her Vagines series, focusing on the visual representation of femininity from a physiological perspective. Her pictorial style became richer in colour and covered themes such as sexuality and maternity, as a result of her experience of pregnancy after a stay in Paris in 1965. She created groundbreaking depictions of the female body in a “non-figurative” style, anticipating the feminist avant-garde of the following decade.

Chordà took an active part in feminist movements from the late 1960s onwards. In 1968 she founded the cultural centre “Lo Llar” in her native city. In 1977 she co-founded the legendary Bar-Biblioteca- Feminista “laSal” in Barcelona and the first feminist publishing house in Spain.

Marria Pratts (Barcelona, 1988) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice gives off an uninhibited and spontaneous spirit. Although Pratts studied Graphic Design at Escola Massana in Barcelona, she is primarily self-taught. Her exploration of various artistic mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, carpets, furniture, and fanzines, demonstrates her commitment to plastic experimentation. Using a vibrant and optimistic palette, Marria draws inspiration from elements found in her neighborhood in Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona).

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Martina Pla (Barcelona, 1962), whose father was a designer and painter, and whose mother was a painter, is a creator of clothing and a fortune teller. She works on the spontaneous drawing of the subconscious, inseparable from her intense biography and from her surrounding landscape. 

From the end of 1970 to the end of 1990, her work was displayed in various group exhibitions and she collaborated with the galleries Fernando Alcolea and Sala Parés. Starting from 2000, she distanced herself from the world of exhibitions and devoted herself to transforming her previous painted work to oil, deconstructing it to reconstruct it, creating compositional synergies in exhibition spaces. In this respect, in 2022 she presented the project “biology of the landscape”, in which nature and the environment are stimuli for pictorial creation.

Nacho Martín Silva (Madrid, 1977) is a Spanish artist whose work blends painting, drawing, and collage to explore the relationship between image, memory, and perception. Using fragmented language and layered compositions, he examines how visual meaning is constructed and transformed. His practice reveals a tension between narrative and abstraction, the personal and the collective.

Niki de Saint Phalle (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1930 - San Diego, 2002) was one of the most innovative, iconoclastic, and socially engaged artists of the mid-20th century. Throughout her prolific career, she developed a distinctive style and created a complex body of work with a profound sociopolitical dimension. She was also a multifaceted artist—she painted, sculpted, created prints and performances, and even experimented with film.

Pablo Picasso (Málaga, 1881 – Mougins, 1973) demonstrated exceptional artistic talent from a young age and went on to develop a revolutionary approach to art that transformed the course of modern art. His diverse body of work spans various artistic movements, including the Blue Period, Rose Period, and the groundbreaking Cubist movement, which he co-founded. Picasso's artistic brilliance, characterized by his bold experimentation with form, color, and perspective, shattered traditional artistic conventions and opened new possibilities for artistic expression. His artistic output encompassed paintings, sculptures, ceramics, drawings, and even stage sets for ballets. Picasso's relentless creativity and constant reinvention made him an icon of artistic innovation, leaving an indelible mark on the art world and inspiring generations of artists to come.

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Rachel Valdés (Havana, 1990) is a visual artist known for her immersive installations, paintings, and public art. Working between Havana and Barcelona, her practice explores perception, reflection, and the relationship between the viewer, space, and reality. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including in Times Square, and is part of ma jor collections across the U.S., Europe, and Latin America.

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Salvador Dalí (Figueres, 1904 - 1989) was a renowned Surrealist artist whose eccentricity and boundless creativity left an indelible mark on the art world. Dalí's works transcended traditional artistic boundaries, encompassing painting, sculpture, film, and even writing. His vivid and dreamlike imagery, filled with melting clocks, bizarre landscapes, and distorted figures, reflected his fascination with the unconscious mind and the irrational. Dalí's relentless pursuit of individuality and shock value made him a prominent figure within the Surrealist movement, showcasing his ability to merge reality with the fantastical. With his technical mastery, Dalí created a unique artistic universe that continues to captivate audiences worldwide, solidifying his place as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.

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Ugo Rondinone (Brunnen, 1964) is an internationally acclaimed Swiss artist whose multidisciplinary work spans sculpture, painting, installation, and video. His art explores themes of time, nature, identity, and melancholy, blending visual poetry with symbolic forms and diverse materials. He is known for his moon landscapes, clown figures, and iconic stone sculptures.

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Victor Jaenada (Barcelona,1977). In 1994, he enters the Llotja School of Art in Barcelona where he will receive five years of classical training. In order to complement this traditional education, he enrolls in the Fine Arts program at the University of Barcelona where he will deepen his knowledge of drawing and painting and experiment with other artistic media. In his 4th year, he is granted a scholarship to study in Granada. After graduating, he transforms an abandoned premise into his house and studio. He will spend five years in this space and will begin to work on his Mural-Installations. In 2013, he returns to the artistic context of Barcelona and expands upon his multidisciplinary projects at the Hangar artist residency. In 2016 he began working in a studio in Barcelona, inserted within the Balaguer gallery. From 2019 he moved to his current studio in Hospitalet de Llobregat, city where he also resides with his family. 
He has exhibited his work in spaces, such as MNAC in Barcelona, CCEMX in Mexico City, Casal Solleric in Palma, The Párraga Art Center of Murcia, or Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona, among others. His work also appears sporadically in projects, both individual and collective, in different galleries and art fairs, such as ARCO Madrid. Some of his pieces are part of collections, such as the MACBA Archives, the Grisart Collection and the DKV Collection.

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Wifredo Lam (Sagua la Grande, 1902 - Paris, 1982) was a Cuban-born artist whose work masterfully blended modernist aesthetics with Afro-Cuban imagery to explore themes of social injustice, spirituality, and cultural identity. Best known for his large-scale paintings, Lam’s art challenged colonial narratives and redefined the representation of non-European identities within the modernist movement.