Miguel MACAYA - Ivan FRANCO, Paintings, A spanish face to face

Since its beginnings in 1999, Gallery ARCTURUS has defended the contemporary Spanish scene by making known artists such as Miguel MACAYA, Regina GIMENEZ, Alejandro QUINCOCES. More recently the gallery organized the first solo exhibition outside Spain for Lidia MASLLORENS, who exhibited since in Singapore, the United States and Europe.

We propose in February 2017 a face to face between a well-known artist of the gallery, Miguel MACAYA, and a new emerging artist Ivan FRANCO FRAGA. Both have chosen a sober figuration, and are committed to achieving oil paintings or pencil drawings, each having a specific mode of expression.

Miguel MACAYA paints mainly oil on wood, with glacis which make the light of the twilight, the shine of the opacity, whiteness modulated and the intensity of the black. He appropriates the classical subjects that are still life, animals, and imaginary characters by making them totally contemporary, timeless.

Ivan FRANCO expresses himself in two distinct ways: the polaroid series, an infinitely delicate work of oil painting on tiny canvas (10x10cm) with the precious spirit of the illuminations; drawings in pencil, on paper of 1 square meter with a precision that could evoke by far a photo and that reveals of close an impressive subtlety. In both cases, he plays confusion with photography, appearance and reality.

Miguel MACAYA’s works draw their source in the "Tenebrism of Ribera and Zurbaran, the best of Goya and other more modern painters like Cézanne or Francis Bacon, or perhaps even some tormented painters such as Fautrier or Soutine, "according to art critic Juan Bufill.

Those of Ivan FRANCO are inspired by mythology as a creator of icons that are the product of a collective imagination.

In front of paintings by both artists one must stop, take time to really look at the work. The feeling is close: power and sobriety, elegance, mystery. The image is timeless and equivocal, time is suspended.