6 Contemporary Artists from Salamanca to Check Out
Salamanca may be a small city, but it has a great artistic tradition. The city has produced some world-renowned contemporary artists and continues to nurture up-and-coming artistic talent. The work of Salamanca’s modern artists can be admired in the city’s many art galleries and museums, as well as on the city streets. Here are a just few of the most interesting local artists you need to know.
1. Zacarías González
Museum
2. Ángel Mateos Bernal
Building, Museum
José Manuel González Ubierna
Another self-taught Valencian artist, González (1900 – 1982) started painting at the age of seventeen and was greatly influenced by the famous Impressionist painters such as Cezanne. His work captures the Salamanca of the early twentieth century in the impressionist style, depicting long-disappeared streets, squares and houses, all bathed in the light of the different seasons and often featuring skies filled with heavy clouds, threatening a storm. You can find examples of his work on display at various museums throughout Salamanca.
Pablo S. Herrero
Salamanca, with its impeccably clean streets and grand buildings, doesn’t look much like a hotspot for graffiti artists. But Pablo S. Herrero is a Spanish artist who started the Barrios Rojos or “Red Neighbourhoods” project to bring colourful street art murals to Salamanca’s neighbourhoods of Pizarrales and Tejares. His work, which can be seen in both cities and rural areas around the world, uses the natural shape of trees, plants and forests to show the relationship between the dynamic and the static, the individual and the community.
3. Chema Alonso
University
4. Santos Javier
The Benito Esteban Gallery also hosts exhibitions from artists who work with the photographic medium, like Santos Javier. He uses layers, patterns and scaled-down images, putting his own photography through mechanical processes before printing. In his last exhibition at the gallery, Acumulaciones, he reproduced sets of photos of plates, bottles, beer barrels, tobacco packs and various other objects representative of consumption and merchandising. His work continues the most consistent tradition of pop; focusing on popular consumption and production on a large scale.
Galería Benito Esteban, Calle Santa Clara 5, Salamanca, Spain, +34 923 21 06 81
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