Ripollés (1932) - Flautista

Engraving by Ripollés, painted and hand-signed on Arches paper, produced in his workshop of Mas de Flors, though they are a series, no two are painted the same.

Juan García Ripollés —known as Ripollés— was born in Alzira (Valencia, Spain) in 1932. His mother's death during childbirth drove him to Castellón La Plana. His early years were not easy: he picked up horse manure, worked as a junkman and a big-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 Drouant David gallery, the same one that had exhibited Picasso and Chagall.
Since his return to Spain, in the nineteen-sixties, his studio is nature.
Today, at 92, it still is: he paints in the orchard of his house in the small hamlet of Mas de Flors, in the province of Castellón.
Over the last five decades, his canvases and prints have been shown in the best galleries and museums of 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.