Juan Uslé

He studied Fine Arts at the San Carlos Superior School of Valencia between 1973 and 1977. In 1980 and 1982 he received two scholarships from the Ministry of Culture. In the early eighties he turned to expressionist painting (consistent with the dominant international trend) and somber (very northern) in which maritime and travel references abounded.

In 1986 he moved to New York, the city where he has been residing ever since. In 1992 he participated in Documenta IX in Kassel, intensifying his international presence. In 1996 his first retrospective was held at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM). In the nineties his work became increasingly lyrical, less referential, more semiotic.

In recent years, his paintings are characterized by the use of very liquid materials and very intense and saturated color ranges. Autobiographical elements merge with compositional games of increasing complexity. A wide range of pictorial resources unfolds across the surface of the canvas and generates a structure that refers us to the graphic and dynamic character of an electronic screen. The reiteration of certain gestures and strokes provoke diverse rhythms in a dense space.

However, the apparent graphic automatism and the lack of univocal figurative references are sustained by a sophisticated conceptual approach that anchors with firmness and rigor each of his works. The symbolic component, the reference to earlier works especially significant for the author, interweave like the patterns of his paintings constituting one of the most personal pictorial languages of our geography and more internationally recognized.

Text provided by the Mediterranean Foundation. Author: J. B. Peiró.