Ripollés (1932) - Platillos

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

Juan García Ripollés —known as Ripollés— was born in Alzira (Valencia, Spain) in 1932. The death of his mother in childbirth led him to Castellón La Plana. His early years were not easy: he gathered horse manure, worked as a scrap dealer, and painted with a broad brush, 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 Galerie Drouant-David, the same one that had exhibited Picasso and Chagall.

Since returning to Spain in the 1960s, his studio has been nature.

Today, at 92, it still is: he paints in the orchard of his manor 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, Hertogenbosch, or Beijing.