Ripollés (1932) - Saxo

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

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 first years were not easy: he gathered horse dung, he was a scrap dealer and a brush-wielding 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 Drouant-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, it still is: he paints in the orchards of his country 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, Hertogenbosch or Beijing.