Apperception #71. Happiness Painting

William Marquina was born in Merida, Venezuela. Attracted by the works of great masters such as Picasso and Leonardo, at the age of 11 he participated in a Sunday outdoor painting workshop. After graduating in visual arts at the University of Los Andes, he studied for a master’s degree in philosophy, followed by an unfinished doctorate, and was a short-term visual arts teacher at the same university. From now on, William will pursue his passion for art by experimenting with different themes, techniques, styles and media. Disappointed by the unstable situation in his country, he emigrated to the city of Quito in 2019 where he currently lives and produces his works. William’s production has been experimentally versatile and challenges us with series characterized by the desire to seek, study and complement the archaic and the contemporary. Among his series are: Brillo, Copia Picasso, Copia Matisse, Copia Da Vinci and Apercepciones. In the latter, he highlights in painting, the subjective complexity in the world of perceptions. He has been exhibiting his recent works in the city of Quito: “What do you see?” at the Humboldt Association (2024); a collective exhibition at the AQ Arte Feria de Quito (2024). In 2023 his retrospective “Imbrications in Painting”; in 2021 International Painting Exhibition at the Casal Català Quito and in 2019 “Exhibition of Ecuadorian Painting” at the Quito City Hall. Other important individual exhibitions but in Venezuela were: in 2012 “Cartographies of the Terrestrial and the Transterráneo”; in 2017 “Care. Path and Limit”, and in 2007 “Essences”. Awarded the First Prize for Arts for University Students, in 2001.