20^th Century Spanish

Ciria was born in Manchester to Spanish parents. He lived there until the age of eight, when his family returned to Madrid. At a very young age he began to make a name for himself in the art world thanks to his drawing and painting skills. After training in several art schools and at the Círculo de Bellas Artes workshops, at the age of seventeen Ciria decided to enrol at the School of Fine Arts of Madrid. However, he dropped out two years later. His first solo exhibition was held in 1984 at Galerie La Ferrière in Paris. Two years later he travelled to New York, a city that would have a major input in his art.

The artist has received a number of scholarships, including one awarded in 1994 by the Spanish Ministry of Culture to travel to Paris and another from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to study at the Spanish Academy in Rome in 1998. Furthermore, in 2001 the Israeli Ministry of Culture and Science offered him a grant to prepare two exhibitions at museums in Tel Aviv.

Ciria is one of the most outstanding Spanish artists of his generation. After an early period working within the confines of expressionistic figuration, in the early 1990s Ciria began to shift towards an abstraction halfway between and geometrisation. His works are to be found in museums worldwide and he has received many awards, including the Ciudad de Alcalá de Henares Prize in 1992; the Gold Medal at the Cairo Biennial in 1994; and the National Printmaking Prize in 2003.

In 2011 the filmmaker Artur Balder shot a documentary on one year in the artist’s life, and in 2012 the IVAM in Valencia organised a retrospective surveying his work to date.

He currently lives between Madrid and Berlin.