Vista Urbana, Diptico

JESÚS BARRANCO

Born in Antequera, Spain, in 1960. He specialized in painting and graduated in 1993 from the San Carlos School of Fine Arts belonging to the Polytechnic University of Valencia.

AWARDS & HONOURABLE MENTIONS

                        3rd Prize. 5th National Oil Painting Award. Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social. Cádiz, Spain.

                         1st Prize. 6th National Oil Painting Award. Barcelona, Spain.

                          2nd Prize. 7th National Oil Painting Award. Córdoba, Spain.

                         1st Prize. 8th National Oil Painting Award. Cuenca, Spain.

                        Honourable Mention. 15th City of Martos National Painting Award. Martos (Jaén), Spain.

                                   1st Landscape Prize. Chiva Town Fall Exhibition Award. Chiva (Valencia), Spain.

                         1^st Prize. 10^th Sot de Chera National Fast Painting Award. Sot de Chera (Valencia), Spain.

1^st Prize. 1st Vall d’Uxó National Fast Painting Award. Vall d’Uxó (Castellón), Spain.

Art work acquisition by the Interart’97 Permanent Collection. Valencia, Spain.

                          Art work acquisition by the Interart’98 Permanent Collection. Valencia, Spain.

                        Honourable Mention. Salamanca Town Hall. Art work acquisition by the Salamanca Museum of Contemporary Art. Salamanca, Spain.

                         Art work acquisition by the Junta de Andalucía (Autonomous Government of Andalusia) in ArteSevilla’00. Seville, Spain.

             ArtExpo New York ’00, International Contemporary. New York, U.S.A.

            AFF London, International Contemporary Art Fair. London, U.K.

BARRANCO. PURE LANDSCAPE.

Jesús Barranco is a young artist from Málaga, in southern Spain, who is nowadays considered as one of the best Spanish landscape painters.

In his works he uses light in order to dissolve matter, setting the atmosphere to reverb thus reproducing the southern ‘calima’ (or breeze coming from the desert). His wide deep perspectives and his personal dry brightness get together and make the observer recall the virtuosity of such a famous painter as Días Caneja.

His compositions stem from the purest and most dynamic forms of  neo-expressionism, searching for an essence that wishes to reach movement. The line that takes us towards the horizon knocks elements off balance. His use of Geometry in buildings and landscapes has to do with constructivism and over such rational structures he applies a rich palette where ochre and vibrant yellow play the main role. Subject matter is freshly and vigorously treated, always perceived from an elevated, nearly omnipotent, vantage point.

Do these canvases show a carefully frozen sense of time or perhaps a strong will to capture the essence of the city? Do they depict existence frozen in the middle of a solitary moor or is it the absence of matter what he is trying to transmit?

Landscape is a mere pretext to paint, never objectivity nor figurativism. The deliberate lack of shadows evokes the concept of colour fields developed by Mark Rothko in such a way that building walls seem to hover over the hazy urban skyline. In his natural landscapes, he constructs meanders by means of series of sharp colour bands, a pictorial resource very popular among the artists belonging to the Support-Surface school.

Barranco’s view of landscape as a lifeless reality where humans never appear certifies his will to focus his creative potential on the basic act of painting. His images involve buildings as a way to introduce some geometrical order into the composition, appearances of a chromatic and aesthetic world in which both abstraction and a profound  reflection coexist.

His intelligent work uses light to dissolve matter and it is also light that serves the purpose to convey the viewer to a place where he or she is able to contemplate and enjoy beauty.