8 artists to vindicate LGTBI+

RedCollectors joins the celebration of the International LGBTI+ Pride Day to commemorate, support rights, diversity and vindictive culture. Meet the selection made by the experts of the online art consultancy. These are the 8 artists we recommend Buy and collect: Cesc Abad, Darío Villalba, Cabello y Carceller, Guillermo Peñalver, Vicente Blanco, Manuel Antonio Domínguez, Pérez Villalta, Juan Carlos Martínez.

Artworks selected

The work of the artists Helena Cabello (Paris, France, 1963) and Ana Carceller (Madrid, Spain, 1964) questions and reflects on gender identity. An identity that they consider to be a construction in conflict or in consonance with a social, cultural, political and economic environment. In his works, he revises the patterns that are statically linked to both male and female roles. In this way, their pieces subvert images, codes of behaviour and attitudes.

Cabello and Carceller's work has been included in solo and group exhibitions, as well as in important grants, prizes and residencies.

The artist Cesc Abad (Barcelona, Spain, 1973) is an artist trained in ceramics, photography and painting.  

His work allows him to observe the landscape in a different way, both figuratively and conceptually. He is interested in provoking surprise, experimentation and the human-nature relationship. His imagery is easily recognisable and he uses dystopia as a tool for social criticism. 

His work belongs to the Collection Fundación MER, Madrid; Stefan Simchowintz, Los Angeles; Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona; Banca Mora, Andorra; Centro de Arte Mutuo, Barcelona; Encinar Collection, Madrid; Albert Madaula Collection, Barcelona; Antoni Morell Collection, Andorra; Carles Barrera Collection, Viella; Josep Soler Collection, Barcelona; Cernuda Collection, Barcelona, among others. 

Darío Villalba (San Sebastián, Spain, 1939-2018) is a graduate in Fine Arts and a member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In 1958 he moved to Paris and painted for a few months in André Lhote's studio. In 1962 he was awarded a scholarship to study at Harvard University.

Since the mid-sixties, he has approached the problems of the latest artistic movements from a personal and original point of view, using photography as painting.  

In 1970 he received the first major recognition for his work, after his presentation at the XXXV Venice Biennale. In 1973 he was awarded the International Painting Prize at the 12th Säo Paulo Biennial. In the same decade he exhibited in major European museums: Künstlerhaus, Vienna, Heidelberg Kunstverein, Heidelberg, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Louisiana Museum, Humlebaek, Denmark, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Stadt Museum Bochum, Bochum, Germany, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Sonja Henie-Niels Onstand Foundation, Hovikooden, Norway. In 1983 he received the National Painting Prize in Spain. 

Guillermo Peñalver (Tarragona, Spain, 1982) graduated in 2009 in Fine Arts from the UCM-CES Felipe II de Aranjuez, specialising in visual arts.

The artist creates fragmented compositions based on drawing and collage. He uses cardboard, pencils and scissors to create an irrational and ironic universe in which poetic narrative, ornate landscape and eroticism are present.

His work has been present in fairs such as SWAB Barcelona, selected by Óscar Alonso Molina, and in Open Studio in 2013. Since 2016 he has been represented by Galería Gema Llamazares, being present in the editions of JUSTMAD and Marbella Art Fair 2015 and 2016, that same year, he participated in the drawing exhibition curated by Mónica Álvarez Careaga at the Today Museum in Beijing and in Dibujos literarios at the Cuarto Real in Granada curated by Concha Hermano. In 2017 he participated in Drawing Room and Estampa.

Guillermo Pérez Villalta (Tarifa, Spain, 1948) is one of the most representative Spanish artists of postmodernism in Spain. He is part of the new figuration in Madrid.

In contrast to the values of a certain abstract modernity, his painting is entirely narrative in nature. In the 1970s, his colourful 'mannerist' style with deformed figures was outstanding. In the mid-1980s his colouring became warm and dirty, with a looser technique.

The artist's work can be found in important collections such as: Amigos del Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid ; ARTIUM Centro - Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria; Ayuntamiento de Sevilla ; Banco de España, Madrid ; CAC Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Málaga, Málaga; CAAC - Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla; CAAM - Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria ; Caja San Fernando, Sevilla ; Colección Fundesco, Madrid ; Colección Banco Zaragozano; Col.lecció Testimoni de La Caixa, Barcelona ; Chase Manhattan Bank, New York ; Diputación Provincial, Granada ; Fundación Banco Exterior, Madrid ; Fundación Josep Suñol, Barcelona ; Fundación Juan March, Madrid ; Instituto de Estados Unidos, Tánger ; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Sevilla ; Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao ; Museo Colecciones ICO, Madrid ; Museo de la Diputación Foral de Álava, Vitoria ; Museo Municipal, Madrid ; Museo Marugame Hirai de Arte Español Contemporáneo, Japan ; Museu d'Art Espanyol Contemporani, Palma de Mallorca ; MNCARS - Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid ; Museo del Revellín, Ceuta ; Palacio de San Telmo, Sevilla ; Patio Herreriano - Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Español, Valladolid ; Real Maestranza de Ronda ; Real Maestranza de Sevilla ; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York .

Juan Carlos Martínez (Badajoz, Spain, 1978) holds a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Seville and an International Master's Degree in Photography from the EFTI School, Madrid. Juan Carlos Martínez's photographs construct a space where the gaze works in a singular way. Subjected to a model of furtive capture, and sometimes directly voyeuristic, their nature is far from an improvised snapshot. In this sense, the artist plays with these diffuse limits of the representable and with the even more controversial issue of the confines of one's own gaze in relation to the intimacy of others.

Juan Carlos Martínez has received numerous grants and awards, including the First ABC Art Prize in its ninth edition and the residencies at the Colegio de España in Paris and at the Academy of Rome. His work has been exhibited in venues such as the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza (CDAN) in Huesca; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Circulo de Bellas Artes, Madrid; Museo ABC de dibujo, Madrid; Museo de América, Madrid; Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, among others.

Manuel Antonio Domínguez (Huelva, Spain, 1976) has a degree in Fine Arts from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and an Official Master's Degree in Artistic Production. He has been part of collectives such as Sala la Perrera and Niños Prodigio and currently works with Galería Ángeles Baños in Badajoz.

In his work he presents a personal, intimate and everyday universe, full of details that make his pieces inexhaustible to contemplate. He creates a universe around the cultural construction of masculinity, with themes of sexual and gender identity.

The artist's work can be found in collections such as: Consejería de Artworks Public and Transport of the Junta de Andalucía, Diputación de Huelva, DKV Collection, El Brocense Collection, Diputación de Cáceres, Guasch Coranty Foundation, IAJ Collection. Andalusian Youth Institute. Junta de Andalucía, KELLS Spain Collection, 21c Musem. USA, Hoffmann-La Roche Collection, Switzerland.

Vicente Blanco (A Coruña, Spain, 1974) is an internationally recognised artist and researcher. He holds a degree in Fine Arts and specialised in Sculpture from the University of Vigo (1997) and a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Granada (2012).

Over the last few years, Vicente Blanco's work reflects on identity, traditions, architecture, landscape and language fading away, absorbed by new economic models. Blanco uses drawing as a tool to unveil power relations and construct other narratives.

His work is part of public and private collections such as CGAC (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea), MUSAC (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León), Caja Madrid, Caja Extremadura, Fundación Coca-Cola, Caixa Galicia, Caixa Nova, INJUVE (Instituto de la Juventud), Patio Herreriano, DA2, Endesa, MACUF (Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Gas Natural Fenosa de A Coruña), Fundación María José Jove, UNED, Comunidad de Madrid, Ayuntamiento de Pamplona, Diputación de A Coruña and DKV, among others.

Pepe Carretero (Tomelloso, Spain, 1962) defends in his themes the life he knows and recreates it regardless of fashions and ups and downs of the cultural world. His work, which is very recognisable within the amalgam of artistic movements, is closely related to the "poetry of experience". His works can be found in different museums such as the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid and in private collections such as the Bank of Spain, the Abello collection, etc.