Pepe Pétalo - El Jardín Prohibido

Pepe Pétalo develops a personal imaginary of the artist, a territory where spontaneous drawing, intuitive gesture, and memory transform into painting. The origin of his work dates back to adolescence, when he began drawing a doodle with a big nose at the margins of his school notes, on napkins, or in textbooks. Those doodles, born almost as an unconscious act, have over time become the seed of his own artistic language.

Pepe Pétalo has spent 25 years of his professional career at the Social Work of the now-defunct Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, where, in his final role, he was responsible for the Culture area and coordinator of the CAM Contemporary Art Collection, currently located in the Museum of Contemporary Art of Alicante (MACA). From that position, he actively participated in the design and organization of numerous itinerant exhibitions across Spain, as well as in promoting emerging artists.

Throughout his professional career he has had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with leading creators such as Carmen Calvo, Eduardo Arroyo, Cristina García Rodero, and Cristina de Middel, the latter President of the Magnum Photos Agency (Princess of Asturias Award for Concord). That proximity to contemporary art from a cultural-management perspective has enriched his outlook, although his painting remains faithful to the freshness and authenticity of the original stroke.

Pepe Pétalo's painting does not seek solemnity or distance. On the contrary, it aims to be an invitation to a smile, to distraction, and to reuniting with that playful part that often dissolves in adult life. His doodles and sketches, seemingly simple, hide a reflection on identity, memory, and the capacity to create without fear of judgment.

“Universe Pétalo. Doodles and scribbles” ultimately represents the public consolidation of an artistic universe that has accompanied the author since his youth and that now unfolds with maturity, coherence, and a clear vocation to connect with the viewer through direct emotion, complicity... and why not... humor.

The Forbidden Garden invites us to enter an enigmatic territory, where nature seems to grow through signs, doodles, and color strokes. On a earthy and dark background appear shapes that resemble flowers, roots, branches, and imaginary organisms, crossed by black lines that seem like roads or boundaries. The intense colors —turquoises, reds, yellows, pinks, and whites— create a wild energy, as if the garden were alive and hiding something we cannot decipher. In different spaces small symbols and invented writings appear, authentic secret languages that hint at hidden messages. The work thus plays between the vegetal and the mysterious, between the spontaneous and the symbolic, turning the painting into a doorway to a new and unknown world.

The defined dimensions of the work are those of the painting once stretched and mounted on the frame. The actual measurements of the canvas are larger to enable its assembly.

The piece is shipped unframed (professional packaging, rolled in a tube). It is delivered with a certificate of authenticity.

You can follow my work on Instagram
@pepepetalo