Miguel Macaya

MIGUEL MACAYA (Santander,1964).
Untitled, 2017.
Oil on board.
Signed in the lower margin.
Measurements: 52 x 60 cm; 74 x 82 cm (frame).
A nationally and internationally recognized painter, Miguel Macaya made his individual debut in 1986 in his hometown, with an exhibition held in the Pancho Cossío hall. Two years later he presented his work at the Cartoon gallery in Barcelona, and in the nineties he began to hold exhibitions in Madrid: Jorge Albero gallery in 1994 and 1997, Nolde in 1996 and 1999, etc. He makes the international leap in 1999 with a solo exhibition held at the Arcturus gallery in Paris, and the following year he is presented at the prestigious Sala Parés in Barcelona, gallery with which he will collaborate from that date. He continues to exhibit regularly in solo exhibitions in Spain and France, as well as in the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom. He has also participated in fairs, such as Antica Namur in Belgium, Strasbourg (both in 2014), Arco in Madrid (2001), Art London in the British capital (2008) and Art Madrid (2011-2015), among others. In parallel, since 1992 he has taken part in important national and international collective exhibitions. The first was the one held by the Delfina Studio Trust in London in 1992, and subsequently he will participate in other important exhibitions such as those held at the Design Center de la Recoleta in Buenos Aires (1998), the Fundació Vila Casas in Barcelona (1999), the Vieleers gallery in Amsterdam (2003), etc. Macaya's work possesses an intense and tenebrous expressiveness, as well as a Goyaesque vein that can be seen especially in his bullfighting works. In this sense, the critic Enrique Lynch wrote that his painting "points the gaze towards the sublime precisely because, without renouncing light, it orients us towards the dark side of vision: towards what we cannot (or do not want to) see, the unknown background towards which his characters turn when they turn their backs on us". It is a work, in any case, that plays at mystery, at the game of revealing only part of the chiaroscuro, at suggesting questions to the spectator. Miguel Macaya is currently represented at the Fundació Vila Casas, and has been awarded the First Prize for Young Painting by the Fundació Banc de Sabadell-Sala Parés (2001).