Juan RIPOLLES

Juan Ripollès, Spanish artist born in 1932 in Castellón,

Orphaned at an early age, he worked during his childhood to feed the rest of the family, and it was, by chance, in the studio of an industrial painter that he discovered painting and made it his own.

Self-taught at his beginnings, he then followed the drawing courses offered by the Ribalta institute in the city of Castellon to improve his skills.

With the exception of a youth trip to Paris and various stays in Holland and Mexico for studies, he always came back to live in his native country.

Ripollés’s artistic teaching can hardly be stated without mentioning the major influence that Picasso’s art had on him. Despite this, Ripollés found his own language, full of reverie and irony, characteristic of his characters.

Ripollès has a unique, poetic and colorful universe with a thousand faces.

Inspired by the human figure and nature, he exercises his talent with a wide variety of techniques (painting, sculpture, engraving) and materials (bronze, glass, resin, industrial painting).

The apparent naivety of his works reveals the character of the artist: idealist, independent and revolutionary. Its characters are endowed with disproportionate heads perched on top of tiny bodies.

One way to highlight the four senses located on the face: hearing, smell, taste and sight. For him, the center of the human being is there, before the heart, which completes the whole for him.