José Luis Olivares

" I was born in Madrid in 1963. I start painting at age 16.

The painting for me is a discovery of myself from the interior of man.

I'm not interested in painting what you see (which would be much easier) but what you feel and imagine.

Painting is independence and freedom, I will never paint for my work to like, I do it because I need it and from myself.

I am more interested in individuality than the collective.

Man is not what is seen only but also its interior, its organs, its blood, its veins, its cells, etc. And also his ideas, his illusions, his spirit, his fears, cowardies and bravery, his love for himself, towards others, love, disaffection, disagreement, etc. All this is in my works. "

He is a figurative artist where the symbology of his work is based on integrating the earth, water, the sky with the animal world and the biodiversity in an interior space and in a magical realism that navigates between the Naif art and the surrealism.

He specialized in Engraving at the School of Applied Arts in Madrid and expanded his studies with the German artist and master engraver Eberhard Scholter in Altea, Alicante. He studied painting at the Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid with the painter José Hernández.

In 1987 he traveled to Central America and in Guatemala he made his first exhibitions and was greatly influenced by the nature and biodiversity environment of the area, this will have a great impact on his later work as an artist. Back in Spain, he worked as a painting and drawing monitor at the García Lorca Cultural Center in Madrid, where he held several exhibitions.

He set up his own engraving and printing workshop for bibliophiles in Madrid. He emphasizes his work of technical supervision and engraving of engravings of the painters Oswaldo Guayasamín, Daniel Merino and Manuel Muñoz Barberán. Olivares worked illuminating old engravings and restoring them to antiquarian booksellers in Madrid. Among his works as a stamper stands out the one he made for the publishing house Liber, where he illuminates by hand the technique of Pochoir - stencilled the facsimile of the Botany of the French naturalist Lamarck of the eighteenth century on the theory of evolution of t...

He has exhibited his work in important galleries in Spain and Central America.