About Me
Painter. Occasionally a photographer. Reluctantly a poet. Working from a fourth-floor studio in Madrid since 1998.
Javier Galán · Madrid
The first version
is still underneath.
I was born in Valladolid in 1974 and did not pick up a brush seriously until I was twenty-four, which I now consider an advantage. Everything before that was looking.
My work moves between four divisions — abstract, geometric, conceptual and figurative — but the method never changes. I build a painting, I lose confidence in it, I scrape it back, and what survives that argument is the painting I keep. Most canvases here carry two or three abandoned pictures beneath the one you can see.
Since 2019 the camera has become part of the studio rather than a distraction from it. The Photo Lab is where that work lives. The poems are older than all of it and were never meant to leave the notebooks.
Fourth floor,
north window
Three rooms on Calle del Olivar. One for painting, one for drying, one for the camera. The north window decides when the day is over.
Where it starts
Four are finished
Never cleaned
- 2026
Low Light, Long Room — solo, Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid. Twenty-four panels in a room held at forty lux.
- 2025
White Room, Nine Works — solo, Galería Elvira González, Madrid. Shown in daylight only; the exhibition closed at dusk each day.
- 2024
The Studio, Relocated — La Casa Encendida, Madrid. Six weeks painting in public.
- 2023
Figure, Isolated — Tabacalera, Madrid. First presentation of the photographic work.
- 2021
Acquisition — Museo Patio Herreriano, Valladolid. Two works from the Red Argument series.
- 2019
The camera enters the studio. First photocollages made from discarded negatives.
- 2012
First solo exhibition outside Spain — Lisbon.
- 1998
Studio opened on Calle del Olivar. Still there.
The studio is open,
by appointment.
Write with a date and I will tell you what is on the walls that week. Available works are never listed publicly before they are hung.
studio@javiergalan.art · +34 910 00 00 00