Lorenzo Valverde
Biography

Lorenzo Valverde was born in Barcelona (Spain). At the Fine Arts Faculty of the University of Barcelona, he studied painting and art theory under the supervision of professor Joan H. Pijoan, Joaquim Chancho and Teresa Blanch. In 1985 he received the Master Class Diploma in Fine Arts.

From the beginning he was interested to explore the limits of painting and by analysis of culture as a legitimation factor of hegemonic classes. This inspired his installations “Initiation Basement” at the Miró Foundation in 1990 and “The Mine of Santa Mónica” at Arts Santa Mónica in 1991, both in Barcelona.

In 1996 he moved to Cologne, Germany, where he still lives and works. Without abandoning his vocation as a painter, Lorenzo Valverde continued creating installations evoking a theater stage, as in “Warehouse”, presented at the Oberlandesgericht Cologne. This is a video projection of the blurred face of an actor reciting verses in a foreign language before a pile of cartons. The theme is the remembrance of the absent speaker. In the other installation, performed in Cottbus and called “Stolen Walls”, in which the artist wants the reclaim artistic liberty from its usurpation by  the “mainstream” culture.

Concerning his painting, Lorenzo Valverde’s following statement  still holds, although he would nowadays cut out some of the superfluous rhetoric:

“ I never had the good manners of a painter. In fact, I always thought of the canvas as a boxing ring. The painting comes out of my body. Sometimes it strikes, usually at a moment of stagnation. From early on, I learned to get rid of the superfluous in my painting, and over time, I also realised that nothing of what I thought I knew is irrefutable. I try to design my paintings in such a way that they look unfinished, as if  part of the picture was missing... The provisional nature of my pictures is important to me. Often, the structure and meaning of my pictures seem to stem from diametrically opposed positions, such as neglected and elegant, poetic and vulgar, heavy and weightless... “

Lorenzo Valverde has exhibited in various Museums and Galleries, such as the Caixa de Pensions Foundation or the Miró Foundation in Barcelona; also, some of his art works can be seen in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art Barcelona (MACBA) and in the Diane&Jay Dunkelman Collection in Cincinnati, Ohio.

He has received Internships and awards, including the first prize of the 8th Painting Biennal in Barcelona. At the moment he is represented by Gallery Alexa Jansen in Cologne, Germany.

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