Biography

Álvaro de la Vega was born in Paradela (Lugo) in 1954, where he would spend his childhood and where he would gain his influence for his artistic creations. Due to family circumstances, he and his family moved to Luarca (Asturias) for the next few years. He later moves back to Lugo to finish secondary school. It is here in Lugo where he displayed his first exhibition, of which only one painting remains. At the age of twenty two, he moved to Barcelona to study Fine Arts. At this initial stage of his career, painting is his habitual means of expression and his main sources of influence are photography, comic and even exploring graffiti concepts.

It is in 1990, having moved to Corcubion (A Coruña), when he begins to explore sculptural language. As a starting point he uses both human and animal figures. “We are skin sustained by a structure. That’s the reason why I made a skeleton as my starting point.” It would be once again back in Barcelona in 1991, where he made his first individual sculpture exhibition at Tom Maddock’s Galery. These first wooden works of art are characterized by paint in order to give them an added expressive value.

During the 90’s, his sculptural language is consolidated by the introduction of other types of materials, such as iron, ceramic or stone. These materials are closely connected to nature and traditional professions. “Iron is a humble, every day material in which the collective, the fleeting, individuality and absoluteness are casted. A new stage filled with intense expository activity occurs at the end of the 90’s, which remains until today, with great presence in important galeries and institutions. Moreover both his international career and works of art become part of featured public and private collections.

Towards the mid decades of this century, the artist deepens his work of art with spatial exploration. For this, he uses the most diverse resources, from cables fixed to and facing ceilings generating tension, to enclosures or supports that act as real interventions in the place they ocuppy. This interaction between space-work of art-spectator continues to be one of the axis of his artistic language. A mature and refined artistic language, which evolves maintaining loyally his fundamental principles. In the artist’s own words, “Above all a sculpture is a presence which communicates with the emptiness and I believe that it is here where the viewer should come into the picture.”