Bio

(Statement)

“My works are linked to my life experiences, it allows me to touch them again, sublimate them and place them. For this reason, loneliness, the sea, repression, women, the struggle for democracy, children, the proximity to death and the enjoyment of life will appear.

But art is also a way of acting because of my commitments for social and environmental justice. For this reason, the denunciation of inequalities will appear, from the social point of view; and threats to fauna and its ecosystems, from the environmental point of view, in search of generating reflections and changes. “

visual artist Guillermo del Valle

Guillermo del Valle

The beginning

He was born in Santiago de Chile in 1955, he had a rather lonely childhood, with an absent father. So he finger painting and writing poetry.
At age 14 he lived a big change. He went from a private school to a public one, and along with that he actively engaged in the process of social justice led by Allende led in Chile.

After the 1973 coup d’état, his commitment was strengthened, and he joined the fight against the dictatorship, in pursuit of human rights and democracy, assuming managerial roles and being detained by the repressive organs of the state.

In the 1990s, a few years after the restoration of democracy in Chile, he experienced another big change. He gradually moved away from active politics, then he devoted himself to business management, especially in the energy sector, and to the design of architectural projects.

When he turned 50, he set out to take a new turn in his life. Although until then he gave a little space to his creative inclinations, designing houses to order, it was when he first migrated to Barcelona that he began his journey of learning and expression through the visual arts in a self-taught way, renouncing his previous work commitments. .

Style and techniques

He started painting when he began what he called “the second half of his life.” Perhaps that is why his works are “a record of the human biographical imprint on different cloths, (…) in a style that oscillates between the surrealist flash, the symbolist and pop”, as described by the Chilean poet and critic Eugenia Brito.

He use of various cloths, as if they were shrouds, as well as paintings on racks with acrylic combined with mixed techniques, where he has used bodies such as brushes and various materials such as wine, semen, blood, hair, wire, plaster, etc., mixed with paints and folds.

Recently in the extreme situation that he lived with Covid-19 in 2020, he used the paper and pencils that he had at hand, to reflect and capture the distressing experience, work entitled Records of COVID