20th-21st century. Spanish

Darío Villalba is widely regarded as a true pioneer of twentieth-century photography.

Born in a family closely associated with the art world, at a very early age Villalba became interested in art and he exhibited his work for the first time at the age of eighteen in Galería Alfil in Madrid (1957). That same year he started to frequent the Círculo de Bellas Artes to paint there and enrolled at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959 he moved to Paris to further his education at the studio of the artist André Lhote (1885-1962). In 1963 he was awarded a scholarship by Fundación Rodríguez Acosta from Granada to study at Harvard University. This experience gave him a chance to become acquainted with the happening art movements of the time, and very particularly with , which used photography to comment on the consumer society. That notwithstanding, in lieu of focusing on the mundane objects that caught the attention of Pop artists, Darío Villalba’s focus lingered on the human being, especially on individuals cut off and ignored by society. In consequence, his work was deeply humane and existential, predicated on a delicate sensibility towards the disadvantaged.

In 1968 he created his first series of Encapsulados, works in which he isolated, protected and encapsulated a number of characters sourced from newspaper cuttings inside urns of plexiglas, then an absolutely contemporary material. In that first generation of Encapsulados, Villalba manipulated his characters, painting them with pinkish tones that contrast with the isolation and loneliness he subjects them to by placing them inside large PVC bubbles. This body of work was presented in 1970 at the Venice Biennale, where it garnered resounding success and earned the artist an international recognition which would pave the way for a large number of solo shows in several European museums. Three years later Villalba exhibited a new suite of Encapsulados at the 12th São Paulo Biennial, for which he won the International Painting Prize. By presenting it within the field of painting Darío Villalba revolutionised the very concept of photography because, besides giving it a monumental dimension, he used it as a support for his painterly work.

In Villalba’s own words: “In my work, photography is painting and painting is photography.” He used oil, pencil or varnish to manipulate photographs culled from the mass media or sometimes taken himself, instilling them with a profound visual sense and divesting them of any purely documentary meaning. Through his works, Villalba reflects on the human being—life, illness, solitude and death—in a highly poetic and at once moving way. This concern for analysing and exploring the individual soul was praised by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), who referred to the Spanish artist as the creator of Pop Soul.

Darío Villalba seeks to cross the borders of the purely tangible in order to foray into the deepest feelings of human beings, giving a voice and a role to the outcasts of society. Both visually and conceptually speaking, Villalba’s work was a true revolution that took photography into new untrodden territory. Still today, his images, altered using a number of different visual devices, place this artist at the forefront of art and stand as testimony to Villalba’s innovative stature.

In 1983 he was awarded Spain’s National Visual Arts Prize; in 2002 he was appointed a member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2003 he was awarded the Medal of Merit in Fine Arts.

Darío Villalba’s works are in the collections of major institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) New York; Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (IVAM) in Valencia; Museo Español de Arte Abstracto, Cuenca (Spain); and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.