Ripollés (1932) - Flautista

Engraving by Ripollés, painted and signed by hand, created in his Más de Flors workshop on Arches paper, pencil-signed in the lower right corner.
Juan García Ripollés —known as Ripollés—, was born in Alzira (Valencia, Spain) in 1932. The death of his mother during childbirth led him to Castellón La Plana.
His early years were not easy: he gathered horse dung, he was a scrap dealer and a heavy-handed painter, until he moved to Paris in 1954. He wanted to be a painter. And it was there that he achieved it.
Four years after his arrival, he managed to hang his paintings in the prestigious Drouand David gallery, the same one that had exhibited Picasso and Chagall.
Since his return to Spain, in the sixties, his workshop is nature.
Today, at 92, he is still the same: he paints in the orchard of his manor house in the small hamlet of Mas de Flors, in the province of Castellón.
During the last five decades, his canvases and engravings have been shown in the finest galleries and museums in Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo or Beijing.
His large-format sculptures have been installed in parks and in the main streets and squares of Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Lisbon, Venice, Verona, s’Hertogenbosch or Beijing.