Juan Barjola

(Torre de Miguel Sesmero, Badajoz, 1919 – Madrid, 2004)

Author's artworks

20th Century. Spanish

Juan Antonio Galea Barjola was born in 1919 in a small town near Badajoz, the city he moved to in 1935 when he enrolled at its School of Arts and Crafts. His passage from adolescence to young adulthood was greatly affected by the Spanish Civil War, which would leave an indelible mark on his production. After the war, Barjola settled in Madrid, where he studied at La Palma art school.

His early paintings are influenced by social concerns dealt with in naturalistic subject matters and rendered in an expressionistic style. In the 1950s, with the human figure already fully incorporated as a central motif, Barjola implemented a synthesis of
and
which he would continue to practice throughout his career. It was at this time when he began to attract a lot of attention and, following his first solo show held in 1957 at Galería Abril, in Madrid, his work was regularly included in exhibitions both in Spain and internationally. He was also the recipient of a Fundación Juan March grant to further his studies abroad.

In the 1960s, Barjola presented works in many biennials and imparted lessons at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. In this period his work became totally abstract: the figures of before dissolved and the colours blended into compositions endowed with great expressive charge. In the following decades he continued exhibiting his work profusely at galleries in Madrid, the Basque Country and Asturias.

Barjola’s practice, highly resonant in the Spanish and international art scenes, was awarded with a number of distinctions, including the First Medal in Painting at the 1968
; the National Visual Arts Prize in 1985 and the Tomás Francisco Nieto Prize in 2001. Several major surveys of his work have also been organised, like Juan Barjola, exposición retrospectiva, held at the IVAM, Valencia, in 2006.