Ripollés (1932) - Músico en la noche

Engraving by Ripollés, hand-painted and signed, made in his Más de Flors workshop on Arches paper.

Juan García Ripollés —known as Ripollés— was born in Alzira (Valencia, Spain) in 1932. His mother's death during childbirth led him to Castellón La Plana. His early years were not easy: he gathered horse manure, worked as a scrap dealer and a broad-brush painter, until he moved to Paris in 1954. He wanted to be a painter. And there he achieved it.
Four years after his arrival, he managed to hang his paintings in the prestigious Drouand David gallery, the same that had exhibited Picasso and Chagall.
Since his return to Spain, in the 1960s, his workshop is nature.
Today, at 92, it remains so: he paints in the vegetable garden of his manor in the small hamlet of Mas de Flors, in the province of Castellón.
During the last five decades, his canvases and prints have been shown in the finest galleries and museums of Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo or Beijing.
His large-scale sculptures have been installed in parks and in the main streets and squares of Madrid, Seville, Valencia, Lisbon, Venice, Verona, Hertogenbosch or Beijing.