b. 1942

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Born in Barcelona, Avilés began his studies in 1964 at the prestigious Conservatorio de Artes Suntuarias Massana where he later served as Professor of Enameling and Drawing from 1970 to 1994. In 1969 he began to exhibit his work in many group exhibitions including the Salón de Mayo, Chile and other major venues in Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam and Vienna.

Avilés’ mixed media paintings are characterized by an architectonic manipulation of the space rooted in his appreciation and knowledge of the Russian Constructivists. His paintings are grounded in a combination of relief and flat structures which culminate in a diversity of concave forms. Avilés’ palette is fundamentally black and white with the addition, usually, of one other color; black expressing “the absence of clarity” and white “conserving the presence of space.” Because of the raised pictorial surface, the illumination of the work from oblique angles creates a multiplicity of shadows, the composition altering with the direction of the light source.

Within these bas-relief works created from ‘found objects’, Avilés creates an axial tension between the vertical and horizontal thrust of the composition referencing the landscape with horizontal space connoting the earth below and the sky above with the introduction of oblique elements to animate the stillness.