20 february – 4 may
Room Philip West. First floor
Philip West (Great Britain, 1949 – Zaragoza, 1997) was an artist framed within a Late Surrealism that clashes with the Minimalism developing in the 1960s. He studied between 1965 and 1970 in the fields of Painting and Sculpture (York College of Fine Arts and Brighton College of Fine Arts). In 1974, he moved to Zaragoza for love, and between 1979 and 1983, he relocated to Venezuela, where he absorbed the region’s mythology through his travels along the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. This journey deepened the artist’s passion for the exotic nature he found there. In 1984, he returned to Zaragoza, making a living as an English teacher. In this city, he moved within artistic circles, where he met José Francisco Aranda, for whom he illustrated several poems and who introduced him to Buñuel’s art, an artist West would come to deeply admire. It was also during this time that he began to build a relationship with fellow surrealist painter Eugenio Granell, to whom he would later donate much of his work and library upon his death in 1997.
As a surrealist painter, André Breton’s theory profoundly shaped his work and artistic process.
In his work, he drifts between different techniques through which he develops a fantastic world full of foreign yet familiar creatures. He draws inspiration from what he sees, transporting the viewer to a reality where the real blends with the imaginary, and the normal merges with the strange.
Death is the thread running through his work, with fauna and sex as its victims. Through nocturnal birds, Philip West comes to life in his paintings, a life destined for nothing but disappearance. He uses animals to explore cruelty, and alongside decontextualized everyday objects, he heightens the sense of unease and intrigue, constantly provoking the viewer.
This exhibition aims to showcase that raw, animalistic side of West, revealing an artist aware of his imminent end, who, through his work, leads the viewer into a world of disquiet. The unsettling becomes present through the fragmentation of his paintings, allowing the artist to play with different themes within a single work. In this way, and always bearing the shadow of death in mind, Philip West explores raw sexuality, insects, and nature, creating a bleak world where the ordinary flows into the unusual.
Eduardo Valiña
Curator
