Coeur Noir Print

Hi my name is David León, also known as @ds.leon, I am a multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on figurative sculpture and also have experience in painting. My story began on a stormy night in the summer of 1979 in Barcelona when a 21-year-old woman gave birth to her first child, a small, big-headed, and hairy boy. I studied in different traditional private schools, where "donkey, the letter only enters with blood" was the motto. Throughout those years, I was humiliated and mistreated, which led me to hide my connection with the plastic arts out of shame and embarrassment. At the age of 14, my mother, after spending a fortune on "RUBIO" handwriting notebooks, decided to take me to a psychologist. Yes, I had dyslexia, so I couldn't write or draw, let alone read. With that diagnosis, a new chapter of my life began: a teacher taught me how to write again. I continued my high school studies and graduated as a Technician in Metal Construction. During those years, the explosion of rap and graffiti took place, which captivated me. In 1994, Montana Colors arrived in paint stores, and armed with the most colorful sprays of the time, I started painting walls like crazy. Although my artwork was not very good, I continued to do it impulsively because I felt an internal need to express myself. Some considered me an artist, but for others, I was simply a vandal dirtying the walls of Barcelona. The years passed, and punk conquered me: the music, the concerts, the libertarian collectives, the squats... They kept me away from the art world for some time. It was another way to express myself to a society that not long ago had emerged from a dictatorship. This time, the materials and mediums were the same, but the colors and messages were different: blacks, reds, and yellows. It was a rebellious youth filled with demands for labor rights, gender equality, discontent with wars and hard drugs, among other things. Following my curiosity and need to express what I feel, my unique way of seeing life and what surrounds me, the day came when I transitioned from the street to exhibition halls to explain and share my story and concerns with a different kind of audience through art.