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