José María Sicilia

José María Sicilia (Madrid, 1954) is a prominent representative of 1980s Spanish painting. After studying at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, he moved to Paris in 1980, where he worked in large formats and his painting constantly evolved. His work is organized into pictorial series that include still lifes and depictions of household tools and utensils, as well as cityscapes of Madrid and Paris. During the mid-1980s, Sicilia achieved recognition in Spain, France, and New York thanks to his painting style marked by freedom of gesture, violent color, and dynamic strokes. His exhibitions in galleries in Paris, Spain, and New York were very well received and marked the beginning of a career established in the history of contemporary Spanish painting. In his most recent work, the image of the flower is a recurring motif that dominates his work. Although Sicilia considers himself an abstract artist, the flower is one of the few figurative traces found in his work. The canvases presented in the exhibition at the Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid, all executed in acrylic, reflect his style, a legacy of geometric art and abstract expressionism. Sicilia actively participated in the selection of the works that comprise this exhibition. This is a compact group of paintings that showcase the artist's solid career and long history. In short, José María Sicilia is a prominent artist in the history of contemporary Spanish painting, whose work is characterized by constant evolution, the use of large formats, and the recurring presence of the image of the flower in his abstract work.