Fernando Vicente

FERNANDO VICENTE SÁNCHEZ (Madrid, 1963).
"Doctor X". 1997.
Acrylic and collage on canvas.
Signed and dated on the back.
Measurements: 138,5 x 109,5 cm.

Acrylic is the technique most used by Fernando Vicente, often combined with collage, as in this composition in which pin ups and comic book heroes share the same apparently chaotic surface but under which hides a narrative open to different readings. His paintings are characterized by the constant presence of the human figure together with elements that the author has collected throughout his life. Thus, of the four main series that group his pictorial work, Anatomías is painted on maps, Atlas on mechanical workshop plates, and Vanitas and Venus use anatomical plates (with the latter two as references, respectively, to the fashion photographs of the 1950s and to the great themes of classical painting).

Fernando Vicente Sánchez is a Spanish painter and illustrator. Self-taught, his first works as an illustrator appeared in the first half of the eighties, in the middle of the Madrid movida, in the magazines Madriz -where he would publish continuously both in the field of illustration and comics- and La luna de Madrid. After this first period, for about a decade he put aside illustration as his main professional activity, to move to the advertising sector, where he would be art director in several agencies. Back to the world of illustration, from 1999 to the present he has published regularly in the newspaper El País and its various supplements, being of special importance his collaborations in the cultural Babelia.1 Thanks to this work he has won three Awards of Excellence from the Society for News Design. His designs have also appeared in magazines such as Europa Viva, Ronda Iberia, Lápiz, Rock de Lux, Vogue, Playboy, Gentleman, Letras Libres, Interviú, Cosmopolitan and DT.

In 1984 he exhibited his work for the first time at the Moriarty Gallery and at the León Comic Festival. Since then he has participated in many exhibitions, both collective and individual, being especially remarkable the retrospective exhibition Universos.

His work is collected in the volumes Los pin-ups de Fernando Vicente (2004, Dibbuks), Literatura ilustrada (2007, Ediciones Sins Entido and Diputación de Sevilla), Portraits (2009, Blur Ediciones), Portadas (2010, Brandstudio Press), Universos (2011, Ayuntamiento de Palma de Mallorca and Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo), Artbook (2014, Ominiky Ediciones) and Fernando Vicente (2014, Roads Publishing).