JOAN RIPOLLÉS (Castellón, 1932).

JOAN RIPOLLÉS (Castellón, 1932). "The flower". Oil on canvas. Signed in the lower left corner. Measurements: 130 x 97 cm. Known by his second surname or as "the Blessed Ripo", Joan García Ripollés discovered his passion for painting when, being still very young and in the middle of the postwar period, he entered to work in an industrial painting workshop. From then on he dedicated himself to painting at night, and later he took drawing classes at the Ribalta Institute in Castellón. After his debut in a collective exhibition held in 1951 at the Caja de Ahorros de Castellón, in 1954 there was a turning point in his career, as a result of a trip to Paris where he established contact with the artistic circles of the city. He remained in the French capital until 1963, and during these years he made twelve paintings for the church of Saint-Paul de Trigan in the Commune des Chaulegnes. However, he could not leave industrial painting until 1958, when he joined the Drouand David gallery in Paris, one of the most prestigious in the world. He organized his first major solo exhibition at MACBA in 1962, and in 1967 he traveled to New York, where he exhibited and sold his entire collection to The William Haber Art Collection. That same year, the New York dealer Leon Amiel, of the Larrouse Gallery, acquires all his work, something that will be repeated on his trip to Japan. From that moment on, he began a brilliant international career that has taken his work all over the world. In 1977 he moved to Holland, where he made the engravings for the book in homage to Josep Plà. Between 1986 and 1987 he devoted himself to sculpture, creating sixty-two works in ceramic and bronze that were exhibited at the 1988 edition of ARCO. He has organized solo exhibitions not only in Spain, Paris and New York, but also in Mexico, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, several American cities, Germany and Japan. He is currently an exclusive artist of The William Haber Art in New York and the Galerie Drouand in Paris. In 2000 he was awarded the Arts Prize of the Valencian Community. Ripollés is, today, one of the most international Spanish artists, and also one of the most complete, as he has worked brilliantly in painting, sculpture and engraving. After a first stage of correct figuration in which he recreates the landscape of his land, his work is leaning first towards a dramatic expressionism, and then towards a simplified painting based on the imaginative and poetic recreation of reality. Within this lyrical, ironic world and a certain eroticism, a work is developed whose roots hide a deep admiration for Picasso and Chagall. Ripollés is represented in the IVAM, the MOMA in New York, the Museum of the University of Alicante, the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville and the MACBA.