Guillermo Lledó
Madrid 1946

Spanish-born Guillermo Lledó has been working in painting and sculpture since the 1970s, and has become a reference point for Spanish art in those fields. He studied at the School of Fine Arts of San Fernando (1964-1968) and obtained a PhD in Fine Arts from the Complutense University in Madrid (1997). He began to paint in the 1970s, using a hyper-realist technique in depicting objects, based on photos that he himself took, mainly in urban settings (fences, traffic signs, man-hole covers) and transferred to canvas out of context, so that he identified the world of objects with representation itself, seeking as much abstraction as his hyper-realist treatment of his subjects permits. In the early 1980s his painting began to shift towards geometric themes, with a certain minimalist neutrality in formal structures that recall architectural elements, and towards the use of industrial materials, as in his series Painted Wood (1981- 1982). In the mid 1980s he moved fully into sculpture, using materials (iron, reinforced glass, fibre-cement) and formal structures reminiscent of industrial elements predominated by a suspension of enunciation and a profound sense of emptiness and silence linked to the contemporary.

Since the 1970s, Lledó has exhibited regularly at the Egam Gallery in Madrid, and there have been solo exhibitions of his work at venues including the Palacio de los Condes de Gabia (Granada, 1987), the CAI Luzán Gallery (Zaragoza, 1995), the Barjola Museum (Gijón, 1998) and the Caja de Burgos Contemporary Art Centre (Burgos, 2006). He has also taken part in major group exhibitions, such as the 1st Salón de los 16 event at the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art (Madrid, 1981) and major shows of Spanish art at the Juan March Foundation (Madrid, 1985) and the Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid, 2001). He has received several distinctions, including the First Prize for Painting at the Alexandria International Bienniale (1979).

Roberto Díaz