Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

Amarillo, naranja y rojo [Yellow, Orange and Red]

Image caption
ANTONIO BALLESTER MORENO

Amarillo, naranja y rojo [Yellow, Orange and Red]

  • 2013
  • Acrylic on canvas
  • 195 x 162 cm
  • Cat. P_780
  • Acquired in 2013
By:
Jorge Pallarés

In 2013 Yellow, Orange and Red marked a turning point for the artist because it was his first work in a more abstract form. Birds were depicted as yellow blotches and trees as green triangles, while mountains grew beyond their actual physical limits to take up much of the canvas. It was the start of a journey towards a new life and a new world from which he may never return.

He has repeated the same artistic process since childhood. Where once he merely looked, observed and played, he has now gradually added more adult skills to his repertoire: reading, analysis, study and the manual dexterity of a craftsman. His ’No Future’ exhibition featured drawings done when he was about eight years old. In it he advocated ’art for art’s sake’: art that is produced spontaneously, out of the sheer desire to create. In his conceptual discourse he clearly examines the limits of craftsmanship and art. His attitude to painting has not changed at all: he turns his back on the madding crowd and paints whatever he wants however he wants. He does this as an act of rebellion; the rebellion of someone whose first love is art with a capital A.

In Yellow, Orange and Red there is a hint of Blinky Palermo’s work from the late 1960s. That is where he takes us in terms of form, but his intentions and what he has to say are very different. In this case he depicts an almost unreal, dreamlike land and landscape in a range of basic primary colours. The scene is inert and lifeless, but full of innocence and creativity. Perhaps these are the endless fields that can be glimpsed even with one’s eyes closed.

Jorge Pallarés

 
By:
Roberto Díaz
Antonio Ballester Moreno
Madrid 1977

Antonio Ballester Moreno studied at the Universität der Künstein in Berlin under Professor Lothar Baumgarten from 2000 to 2002 and later graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid. His early work centred on video, but since 2006 he has used mostly paint on canvas, collage, ballpoint, felt-tip, crayon and coloured pencil drawing on paper as the methods that he feels are best suited to his idea of creative freedom. He advocates the unlearning of cultural stereotypes and follows the premises of art brut in regarding ‘genuine’ forms of artistic expression such as children’s drawings, amateur art, folklore and craftsmanship as primal methods uncorrupted by consumer society. This results in highly colourful work and expressive use of colour, with flat, contrasting shapes and child-like brushstrokes —including childhood drawings of his own— in schematic figurative scenes. These scenes depict everyday themes, with a seamless relationship between mankind, the animal world and nature in a style consistent with the anti-establishment, anti-technology stance adopted by the artist.

Although his career has not been a long one, his work has been shown in solo exhibitions at galleries such as the Castilla y León Museum of Contemporary Art (León, 2008) and La Casa Encendida (Madrid, 2011 and 2017). In 2018 he took part in the Biennial in São Paulo as both an artist and the curator of the ‘Affective affinities’ exhibition. He has also exhibited at galleries in Los Angeles, Seoul, Berlin, Barcelona and Madrid and been involved in numerous group exhibitions and publications devoted to the latest trends in pictorial art.

Roberto Díaz

 
«Antonio Ballester Moreno. Copper, Cobalt and Lead» (Madrid, 2013).
Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 2.