20th Century Spanish

Quejido is considered one of the most outstanding artists of the generation, and a pioneer in Spain in the creative use of computers.

In the early 1960s he moved to Madrid, and from 1964—when he began to paint—until 1974 he carried out a systematic and successive internalisation of the different avant-garde idioms of the time, ranging from Informalismo and to technological art, although his earliest work has been defined as expressionist.

Together with Ignacio Gómez de Liaño and Herminio Molero, Quejido founded Cooperativa de Producción Artística y Artesana, a group focused on visual poetry. He also undertook research related to computer generated painting at the Calculus Centre at Universidad Complutense, Madrid.

In the mid 1970s he joined a group of painters including Molero, Pérez Villalta and Alcolea, authors of a figurative style of painting, which revolved around the Amadís and Buades galleries in Madrid. He began work on a series of pictures on cardboard that explored the possibilities of painting.

In the 1980s, he recovered his earlier interest in the origins of 20^th century painting, and engaged in a profound study of Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne and US painting. All this experimentation and reflection would lead him towards abstraction in the 1990s, a period where he continued working on his series incorporating materials like newspapers.

A signature feature of his work is its vibrant lively palette and superbly applied brushwork. At a certain moment Quejido reacted against the obscurantism and the existentialist severity of his earlier period and, at present, he adopts a more ironic and provocative attitude.

The artist has been included in many solo and group exhibitions, with a special mention for the show held at the IVAM of Valencia in 1997.