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Santiago Martinez Peral

BIOGRAPHY

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Graduated in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid in the specialties of painting and engraving (1998), Martinez Peral won an Erasmus grant at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice (1996). He has participated in artistic residencies such as Art House Pani (Querétaro, México 2021 ) Art House Holland (Leiderdorp, Holland 2020) The Fish Factory Creative Center (Stödvarfjodur, Iceland. 2019) and JOYA. Air (Almería, Spain. 2018).Aside from notable Solo exhibitions at the Begoña Malone gallery in Madrid, " Heads and castaways" (2012), "Interiors, Firmaments and children's games" (2009), "Towards the island" (2007) and "The monkey on the step" (2005), Martinez Peral's work has been present in many group exhibitions such as "Transforming" at the Martin's atelier gallery (Brussels 2020) "The large format homage to Cervantes" at the Archaeological Museum of Albacete (2016) the 77th Autumn Salon in the Casa de Vacas de Retiro. Madrid (2010) or "Naturalmente artificial. Art and nature in Spain. 1967- 2006" at the Esteban Vicente Museum, Segovia (2006).

Martinez Peral has also participated in international fairs such as T.I.A.F (Toronto, Canada. 2012). Espacio Atlántico (Vigo. Spain. 2011) KIAF, (Seoul, Korea 2004) and Art Frankfurt. Germany (2004). Martinez Peral has also extended his painting to other fields, creating backdrops for plays such as "Alarde de tonadilla" (2016) and "Where does the nightingale look when a branch cracks?" (2013) by playwriter Hugo Pérez de la Pica with the Madrid Tribueñe theater company, and sleeves for music bands such as Rufus T. Firefly, Inlogic and Psilicon Flesh.

Symbolism, sensuality, expressionism, play and hybridisation are topics frequently featured in Santiago Martínez Peral's body of work which covers an extensive range of pictorial typologies. He considers Art not only as a form of expression, but an opportunity to study the subject on which he is working. A means of understanding the reality that surrounds us and that everything in it, is subject to be represented. His images are nourished by nature and its inexhaustible source of wonders, from Art history, from Antropology and from memory. The main subject of his painting is the body. Human bodies, animal and vegetal. Martinez Peral approaches the classical genres of painting with a renovating intention and understands that creation must involve an exhaustive study of the inherited tradition and at the same time be an act of maximum freedom. Working through fragmentation he gives rise to a new coherence transformed into unexpected and unusual images.

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