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

Collection

Domus Aurea

Image caption
GUILLERMO PÉREZ VILLALTA

Domus Aurea

  • 1988
  • Oil on canvas
  • 200,5 x 200,5 cm
  • Cat. P_431
  • Acquired in 1989
By:
Isabel Tejeda

Domus Aurea (Latin for ‘Golden House’) is an oil painting on canvas produced by Pérez Villalta in Madrid in 1998, just before his time at the Spanish Academy in Rome (1989-1990). He has said that he paints from memory, it could be argued here that he is rather painting from desire. References to architecture can again be seen in this piece. It depicts Emperor Nero’s vast residence on the Palatine Hill, which was discovered by chance due to a large hole in the roof of one of the rooms. In the painting that hole is an imagined skylight that is crossed with the real world, where the past and present are merged narratively. Works like this one, painted in the 1980s and 1990s, usually feature dreamlike spaces inhabited only by men, which Carmen Tejera calls ‘androecia’

Isabel Tejeda

 
By:
Beatriz Herráez
Guillermo Pérez Villalta
Tarifa (Cadiz) 1948

After starting to study Architecture in Madrid, Guillermo Pérez Villalta switched to History of Art, and travelled to and spent time in cities such as Paris and Rome. From the 1970s on, his name was linked to Carlos Alcolea, Carlos Franco and Rafael Pérez-Mínguez, who were key artists in the new Madrid figurative art movement. Their work was shown in group exhibitions organised at Sala Amadís, the gallery run by Juan Antonio Aguirre at that time, where they called for a return to figurative painting. One of the leading lights in the movement was Luis Gordillo.

History, mythology, architecture, design, a study of human anatomy, geometry and perspective are some of the sources that can be found in Pérez Villalta’s oeuvre. From his return to Italian classicism, metaphysical painting and the Spanish Baroque to his interest in figures such as Jacques-Louis David, Salvador Dalí and Giorgio Morandi, Pérez Villalta’s work is a ‘painting of ideas’.

His allegories are drawn from a rather unusual wealth of iconography. Apart from the ‘pleasure of painting’, they bear witness to an era, to a generation that he captured masterfully. Pérez Villalta painted Group of People in an Atrium or Allegory of Art and Life or of the Present and the Future (1975-1976), where he portrayed Juan Antonio Aguirre and Luis Gordillo, Chema Cobo, Manuel Quejido, Herminio Molero and himself, among others; and Scene. Figures Leaving a Rock Concert (1979), with the members of the bands Kaka de Luxe and The Zombies, fellow travellers in other settings of Spanish ‘modernity’ such as the TV programme La edad de oro, in the first episode of which Paloma Chamorro devoted an important spot to the artist.  These were ‘historic times’ that Pérez Villalta recorded as a chronicler, including autobiography as a fundamental resource when producing his works, in his ‘life painting’.

Pérez Villalta received the National Award for Plastic Arts in 1985. His latest solo shows include an anthology at the ICO Museum (Madrid, 2008); at the Andalusia Contemporary Art Centre (Seville, 2015); at the Rafael Ortiz Gallery (Seville, 2013); and at the Fernández-Braso Gallery (Madrid, 2014).

Beatriz Herráez

 
«ARCO International Contemporary Art Fair» (Madrid, 1989). «20 Contemporary Spanish Painters in the Banco de España Collection», Sala de Exposiciones de la Estación Marítima Xunta de Galicia (La Coruña, 1990). «20 Contemporary Spanish Painters in the Banco de España Collection», Palacio del Almudí (Murcia, 1990). «20 Contemporary Spanish Painters in the Banco de España Collection», Sala Amós Salvador (Logroño, 1990). «20 Contemporary Spanish Painters in the Banco de España Collection», Museo de Navarra (Pamplona/Iruña, 1990-1991).
Vv.Aa. Arco 89. Feria Internacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Arco/Ifema, 1989. Vv.Aa. 20 pintores españoles contemporáneos en la colección del Banco de España, Madrid, Banco de España, 1990. Vv.Aa. Colección Banco de España. Catálogo razonado, Madrid, Banco de España, 2019, vol. 3.