Boletines de noticias
65,4x54cm oil, spray and colored pencils on canvas
2023
*Original available. Send me a message for pricing and shipping options.
October 2022
Sometimes things don’t go as planned and this was one of them. Just the day before the opening I got a positive test for COVID and we had to postpone the party. My wife and daughter were positive too but we all are ok, just some little symptoms. We’ll make a proper guide visit or “rentrée” in the next weeks but in the meantime, the show is open to the public and I have added all the paintings to the online shop.
I’d love to talk you a little about one of my favourite galleries in Madrid: My Name’s Lolita Art. Located at C. de Almadén 12 in what we call “El Barrio de las Letras” because all the writers that lived there during the XVII century. This neighborhood has a lot of history and is near the main city museums as El Prado, a location full of art galleries, theaters and lovely places to eat or just have a drink and enjoy a taste of the old Madrid. Owned by Ramón since 1988, I must admit he has a really good eye to catch new talent and a pretty interested rooster of consecrated artists as Paco Pomet, and most of the best shows I’ve seen this year had been at his gallery. He is a perfect host and always finds time to talk to you about the shows and you can see his true love for what he is doing. Definitely a place to visit if you love art and you are in Madrid.
My name’s Lolita art website
In the past few months I’ve been asked about selling some of my paintings as NFTs and the time has come. I know this is uncharted territory for a lot of people but, after some digging and consulting with some old fellows from my past life as a web developer, I’ve decided to start my own collection at Opensea. I’ve listed four of my bubble gum paintings there as unique pieces. Take a look and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask! Click here to visit.
See you next month,
Thanks!
July 2022
September 1st
I’ll be part of a group show here in Madrid at the Sara Caso Gallery. It’s been a last minute deal but I’m truly happy that Sara and her team are giving me the chance to be part of something new and fun.
October 22nd
Next one will be something different from my current line of work, I’ll have a solo show in Navel Art about medicines still life paintings. It’s something I’ve been working aside and the people’s response has been great so far, I’m so excited about how this new theme will grow with time. More news will be posted when the show opening is near.
This month we got the chance to visit two great shows here in Madrid. The first one was a retrospective about Alex Katz at the Thyssen Museum (one of the Big 3 in the city). I didn’t know much about this painter, but his huge portraits were impressive in their simplicity and learning he kept painting until his 90s gave me hope (or the chills). The second one was about a spanish photographer: Gonzalo Pérez Siquier. His photographs of people at the beach were incredible, specially when you find out they were taken in the late 70s and the 80s. His work is still influencing lot of contemporary photographers, pretty awesome.
I hope one day our daughter loves going to art shows as much as we do, right now she spends most of the time sleeping!
We’re going on vacation for almost all august so there won’t be any more painting until september. Since the both of us are not from Madrid is time to visit our parents and let them enjoy their first granddaughter and maybe give us some rest. In the meantime I’ve activated a summer discount on the shop so you can get a 30% off until august 31th, but shipping will have to wait until september. Just use the code “SUMMERSALE” on checkout and it will be applied.
Hope you and yours are ok and having a good time.
See you next month,
Thanks!
May 2022
I’ve been following Miguel Gómez Losada’s work for a few years now and this May I had the chance to spend a weekend with him and some fellow artists. Just painting and talking about painting, and our different approaches to our practice.
Thanks to the people of Fresco.Arte we had two wonderful days where Miguel talked about how painting is more related to poetry than photography and how to get rid of our inner prejudices, in terms of our skills, when we paint and how to build our own worlds. I found his take on painting truly inspiring and, since I’m exploring my “surreal” side after all these years, I’m feeling the need to care more about what I’m telling that how I’m painting it, or as I read somewhere: “less details and more poetry”.
Check Miguel’s work on instagram, it’s pretty awesome.
Two shows caught my eye this month. The first one was Miguel Coronado‘s at Ansorena (one of my favorite galleries in Madrid). I discovered Miguel’s work a few months back and seeing it in person for the first time was awesome. The way he loses the figures but you still can recognize what you are looking at is so beautiful.
The second show was Paco Cachadas’ at Veronica del Hoyo y Colino. A new gallery I didn’t know about but worth keeping an eye on, their next shows are quite promising. Paco’s work is more classic, in a figurative way of speaking, but the subjects he chooses and his interiors have some kind of mystery that keeps you staring at them.
With each passing month my confidence about this line of work grows and things are starting to take shape. I have a lot of new rough sketches waiting to become paintings and I’m also playing with 3D software to get better references for what I’m looking for. I’m really happy with the outcome and really excited with what’s coming next. Some of the pieces were added to the shop and you can always follow my progress on instagram.
See you next month,
Thanks!
April 2022
Finally our first daughter was born on the 11th and we are so happy! She’s doing great and letting us sleep at night (thank God). Charlotte (the mother) is also recovering pretty well, can’t wait for all that is to come. By the way, if you haven’t seen my wife’s totally awesome tattoo work this could be a great time 😉
https://www.instagram.com/charlotte_tattooing/
Before the baby arrived, we managed to visit some art shows of two artists I’ve been wanting to see their work in person for a long time, Julio Larraz and Paco Pomet. Each one of them approaches contemporary surrealism in a truly personal way. Larraz plays with some childish vibes and vintage aesthetics building scenes as if you were looking in to someone’s dreams, while Pomet builds odd narratives intervening monochromatic pictures with unexpected elements. It was great to be able to take a closer look to these works. If you like art, please go to art shows anytime you can. There’s a physical component to painting that has to be experienced alive.
The first bubble gum portrait dates from December of 2012, 10 years ago!
It was the time before I learned to paint with oils and was made digitally with photoshop. The next bubble gum portrait was “How far is a light year?” and it only took me four years to get there.
I’ve been thinking about how to make these newsletter more fun so I’m gonna leave the comments open in this newsletter in case you wanna comment or ask anything, don’t be shy! (Just be polite with other people).
Thank you all!
– A
March 2022
Thanks to the people of Navel Art (big thanks to Teresa and Carlos for all their work and support) I had the chance to be a part of this year’s “Madrid’s art weekend” at JustMad art fair, one of the most important for emerging artists here in Spain. I shared the space with abstract painter Lidia Sancho and we made a great team bringing a lot of color to the place.
It’s been a great opportunity to meet other artists, art critics and to speak with some fans and meet new ones, thank you everyone! It’s also been pretty exhausting but totally worth it.
I don’t usually have the chance to speak with other professionals about our work and it’s been great: Ira Torres, Rafa Jiménez, Rafael Blanco, Yves Sadurni and Juli About just to name a few (you should check their work).
For a while I’ve been thinking about new directions in my work and something that always interested me was surrealism. Nothing that I haven’t tried in the past with little paintings, but this time I wanted to go a little further. For example, “The stuff that dreams are made of” is a painting of 64×52 inches, the biggest one I’ve painted ever. I have updated the Art Gallery page so you can take a good look at these and some new bubble gum portraits.
Last summer I was asked by the LA funk band “The Main Squeeze” to paint a portrait for their next album “To be determined…” and it will be finally released on April the 1st. Can’t thank them enough for giving me the chance to be part of something so beautiful. Love their music and their mix of styles!
As I said before, we’re expecting our first daughter for the first days of April and we can’t be more happy about it (and a little nervous) so, I don’t know if there’ll be a newsletter next month. I’m going to take some time to help my wife with everything but I’m sure I’ll be back before you even know it 🙂
In the meantime the shop has been updated with some new framed originals (with custom floating pink frames) and I keep posting some new process and reels on instagram, don’t forget to show some love!
Thank you all!
– A
January 2022
Hope you all had a good (and safe) time, we spent the first days of 2022 in Barcelona visiting some friends and had the chance to find out there’s a new museum in town.
It’s a 16th Century palace located on Montcada Street, near Picasso’s museum and MEAM (one of my favorites) what makes that location a must if you are into art and architecture. Their permanent collection is focused on some contemporary great names as Basquiat, KAWS, Keith Haring or Yayoi Kusama for example. But what really surprised me was finding they had a temporal exhibition by Guillermo Lorca, an incredible painter.
There were also some interesting art installations but if I had to mention one it would be the one by Studio Irma. A thousand color lights and mirrors that make you feel as if you were “travelling through the Bifrost”*, pretty awesome.
*Thor reference by my wife.
And since we were near the MEAM and I knew the Figurativas and Arc Salon exhibitions were extended I couldn’t help myself but visit them. If you are into figurative art, the MEAM it’s a must in Barcelona. This time they had the Figurativas 2021 exhibition with the selected artists for the biannual competition they hold. This edition’s winner has been Paco Lafarga, an spanish painter whose work is focused on still lifes and looking for new ways to achieve realism with oil painting. I find his artwork as lab experiments filled with accidents that are a joy for the viewer.
Beside Figurativas 2021 the MEAM had the 15th Arc Salon exhibition, another figurative art competition show. This one from the US. It’s always nice to visit this show because there aren’t many chances here in Spain to see some of the painters that participate and this time a friend of mine, Kasia Umińska was among the selected ones. We met a few years back on a paint workshop here in Madrid and it’s great seeing her growing and achieving her goals.
Just Mad is only a month away and the studio is starting to be filled with new artwork. I’ll reveal all the new pieces during February once I’ve taken nice pictures of them but here’s a little preview of a new one. Hope you like it!
I couldn’t use the projector because the new studio doesn’t have curtains yet so I had to use a grid to translate the drawing to the canvas, a little fun XD
https://www.instagram.com/agrahovsky/
Thanks!
– A
December 2021
Next February I’ll be part of Just Mad Contemporary Art Fair here in Madrid during the “Art weekend”. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, during that weekend the main contemporary art fairs (Arco, ArtMadrid, etc…) take place and national and international collectors gather here in Madrid to find and buy new art. It’s a great opportunity to be seen and discovered so I’m working on some new pieces for that occasion (that’s why there won’t be too many updates on the online shop until then).
This month one of my favorite painters is having a show here in “Casa de Vacas”, an amazing place in the center of “El Retiro”, one of the biggest parks Madrid (the park was build for the King’s playtime – it even has a lake – but since 1868 it’s open to the people). What a place for her to have this show. Her work focuses on how we accumulate and how this can be translated to painting using color and the density of oils.
She left a big blank canvas and she’s been painting alive since the first day of the show, it was a pleasure to see her working. You should check her work out!
https://www.instagram.com/cuadradoirene/
I moved to the new studio this month and I can’t be more happy about it. I have more space and the light is better since I can work with indirect natural light. The last studio had some hours of direct sunlight that could make the colors change through the day in weird ways. Here is a little sneak peek at what I’m working right now.
I’ve also started to do some timelapse videos on my instagram account and I’m thinking about making some full process videos on youtube, would you like that? Please, let me know your thoughts on that.
https://www.instagram.com/agrahovsky/
Have a nice Christmas!
– A
You'll get a newsletter each month with new paintings, art prints and some insights about my journey as an artist.
