Hugo Fontela Art for Sale at Auction

b. 1986 -

Hugo Fontela has dedicated several series to Manhattan, where he has lived since 2005. In the painting we are dealing with, his communicative and expressive power is evident, using the minimum elements, achieving a composition of the utmost visual elegance. His language, although abstract, lets us read between the lines stories buried in the memory. The artist explains that he usually starts from the image of a place, often an urban landscape, which has been engraved in his memory, and then visualizes that imprint on canvas or paper. His goal is to build pieces in which the unreal is an essential aspect in order to understand them, to create new realities and to ensure that the image that moved him at the beginning also moves the viewer. His love for painting began in childhood. From the hand of the Asturian painter Amado González Hevia (Favila), he entered the School of Arts and Crafts of Avilés when he was fourteen years old. He later entered the Oviedo School of Art, and when he was about to begin studying for a degree in Fine Arts, he decided to move to New York and joined the Art Students League of New York.

In 2005 he received the BMW Painting Award, in the twentieth edition, and in 2007 he won the prize for best artist at the Graphic Art Fair ESTAMPA,3 awarded by the Association of Art Critics of Madrid. In 2006, together with Juan Hidalgo, he participated as a guest at the XVIII Bienal de Pintura de Zamora. In 2011 the Museum of the Abbey of Montserrat, in Barcelona, begins an exhibition of his works made in America, which is inaugurated by the Prince and Princess of Asturias. That same year, as a result of two stays in Rio de Janeiro with Oscar Niemeyer (2009 and 2011), the exhibition Niemeyer by Fontela is held at the Niemeyer Center in Avilés. Banco Sabadell has his work.

Among the centers that have exhibited his works are the Casa de Vacas in Madrid, the Revillagigedo Palace in Gijón, the Círculo de Arte in Barcelona, the Cervantes Institute in Chicago, the 100kubik Gallery in Cologne, the Niemeyer Center, the Gabarron Foundation and the Carles Taché Gallery in Barcelona.