During this year 2024 in our art gallery Lanzarote Art Gallery situated in Costa Teguise (Lanzarote, Las Palmas) you can find a lot of contemporary art works of local, national and international artists. The works range from figurative to abstract art, from graphic works or drawings on paper to paintings on canvas or board. In this article we present a summary of the 10 most significant artists in our gallery.
Alejandra Feijó
First of all, we are going to talk about the Argentinean artist Alejandra Feijó. Born in “the sixties”, she worked as a graphic designer before turning to painting.
“When I paint women, they and I are the same person, without past or future, only in the now,” says the artist. In fact, women are her favourite subjects, painted with feverish and passionate brushwork, combined with drawings and sketches.
The female nude has a long history in art, as in the works of Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920). However, the nude aroused disapproval at a time when women’s rights were not recognised, as witness the uproar caused by The Luncheon on the Grass painted in 1863 by Édouard Manet (1832-1883), right up to the Austrian Egon Schiele (1890-1918), who was accused of immorality for his paintings.
Over time, our way of looking at nudes changed, and from the 20th century onwards women were no longer represented as passive subjects of contemplation. Feijó’s women are strong, free women, with their own bodies and showing their sexuality.
Édouard Manet, El almuerzo sobre la hierba, 1863, óleo sobre lienzo, Museé d’Orsay, Paris
Ale Feijó, Poética de la Partida, 2020, acrílico sobre lienzo, Lanzarote Art Gallery, Costa Teguise, Las Palmas
Alfredo Montaña
Another amazing artist is Alfredo Montaña of whom you can find an important number of works in the Lanzarote Art Gallery. Born in Oviedo in 1948, Montaña began his career as an art historian and was a professor at the University of Salamanca.
He exhibited for the first time in León in 1968, with works ranging from still lifes, human figures, bullfighting, to abstract paintings such as Series formas V (2017). His paintings are composed of sad or reflective characters represented through geometric shapes. He paints the interiority and thoughts of human beings, represented as hermetic characters.
Alfredo Montaña, Series Formas V, 2017, óleo sobre lienzo, Lanzarote Art Gallery, Costa Teguise, Las Palmas
For those who love abstract art, in our gallery you can admire the paintings of Ana Reynolds, an artist from Madrid who approached art as a photographer before discovering her true passion for painting.
Her works represent her point of view on reality and her colour palette is very delicate, with shades of beige, white, brown, grey or blue. For her paintings she is inspired by nature: landscapes, trees, rain and earth are her main themes.
Begoña Lafuente, born in 1969 in Spain, studied in Madrid before moving to the Netherlands to open her studio. She is a multifaceted artist, dealing with painting as well as graphic art, design, photography and illustration. Frequently, her works are reinterpretations of iconic paintings from art history; one example is Woman in Red 361 (2015) which is inspired by the famous Lady with l’ermellino (1490) by Italian master Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). They are coloured paintings with thick brushstrokes, made with acrylic and collage on canvas.
TranslBegoña Lafuente, Mujer de Rojo 361, 2015, acrílico y collage sobre lienzo
Leonardo da Vinci, La dama con l’ermellino, 1490, óleo y temple sobre tabla, Museo Czartoryski, Cracovia
Fabio Hurtado’s work represents a return to figurative painting in contemporary Spanish art. Born in Madrid in 1960, Hurtado graduated in Fine Arts, initially working as a photographer and teaching design at the Complutense University of Madrid. His canvases show human figures, mostly female, in moments of relaxation and with reflective faces. The painter plays with shapes and curved lines, creating idyllic scenes which, through the costumes and poses, seem to take us back in time.
José Carlos Parra is originally from Jaén, from a family of olive growers. At the age of 16 he moved to Madrid, where he began to visit galleries and museums to draw the works of the great masters. Later he moved to Barcelona and Ibiza, selling small works of art in order to survive. For five years he also studied theatre and cinematography, until he was discovered by the gallery owner Isabel Alberich, to whom he owes his great success.
From that moment on he began to exhibit in Florence and Paris, taking various art courses. After having started as a figurative painter and designer, he evolved to abstract art, creating canvases inspired by still lifes and landscapes.
Guacimara Melián was born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in 1976. She studied at the Escuela de Artes Aplicadas y Oficios Artísticos of her city and started painting very early, finding her inspiration in the sea. Her works represent
Guacimara Melián, Serie Anatomía de una playa II, 2023, óleo sobre tabla
Claude Monet, Impresión, sol naciente, 1872, óleo sobre lienzo, Museo Marmotean Monet, París
Maite Cantó Equisoain (1973) is another important artist whose work can be found in Lanzarote Art Gallery. With a degree in Fine Arts and Design from the University of the Basque Country, she lives between Vitoria and Pamplona, where her atelier is located. Throughout her career, she has worked with many companies and has exhibited in different museums, such as the Thyssen Museum in Malaga and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.
His works are surprising, both in painting, three-dimensional works and sculptures made with resin, such as Barbie is not here (2023) or Valentina ReBorn (2023).
Maite Cantó, Barbie not is here, 2023, resina
Maite Cantó, Valentina Reborn, 2023, resina
Marité Crespo (1960) is an Argentinean artist and architect. Her abstract paintings represent her way of seeing the complexity of the world, through a superposition of techniques and experimentation with different materials, creating very expressive works.
In her canvases we find numbers next to words, bright colours with thick brushstrokes, to express feelings such as joy, sadness, fear or melancholy.
Finally, we have Modesto Roldán (Nerva, Huelva – 1926-2014). He lived for a long time in France, where he became acquainted with the French classics, including the writings of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Zola, Maupassant and Flaubert.
His works, almost all of which are executed in acrylic on board, are inspired by these books to create an idyllic, dreamlike world, which sometimes resembles surrealism. In his paintings he uses the technique of pointillism as an overexpression, adorning the female body with forms that simulate various types of lace.
Modesto Roldán, Aphrodita, 2000, oil on panel, Lanzarote Art Gallery, Costa Teguise, Las Palmas, Spain.
Aurora Argiolas / Art Historian
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