Ripollés (1932) - Violinista

Engraving by Ripollés, painted and hand-signed, made 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 at childbirth took him to Castellón La Plana. His early years were not easy: he collected horse manure, worked as a junkman and as a broad-brush painter, until he moved to Paris in 1954. He wanted to be a painter. And that is where 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 returning to Spain, in the sixties, his workshop is nature. Today, at 92, it remains so: he paints in the orchard of his mansion in the small hamlet of Más de Flors, in the province of Castellón.

During the last five decades, his canvases and engravings have been exhibited in the finest galleries and museums in Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo or Beijing. His large-format sculptures have been installed in parks and on the main streets and squares of Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Lisbon, Venice, Verona, Hertogenbosch or Beijing.