By Jordi Diaz Alamà
Located in Culver City, CA
"Lucas" Oil Painting 15" x 15" inch by Jordi Diaz Alamà
Oil, enamel and resin on canvas
RED STUDIO series
Alamà offers through this series of saturated, vivid and imposing reds, a privileged peek inside the universe of the painter’s studio, the practice of working with life models and the vast plurality in sensuality. Red Studio synthesizes the many layers of technical research the artist has acquired over the last decade. Academicism and abstraction coexist again on the canvas: a new aesthetic chapter carried out by an overwhelming expressive force in the form of a dance between the measured and the vigorous brushstroke.
The work of any figurative painter is also the fruit of a dialogue with their models, a true collaboration. Every time the painter tries to capture the attitude and the pose of a model, we see a different character emerging. In this series, although some of the paintings represent the same model, we never see the same person twice. Only a slight change in posture, attitude or look is necessary to bring to life a whole new personality.
A clear boldness emanates from each character in a different way, confronting the viewer with their unapologetic nudity and forward attitude. They are engaging but not plainly offered to the viewer. We are only allowed to be accomplices in their beauty, exploring their bodies without reservation or deception.
Red Studio has been developed in parallel with another of Alamàs’s ambitious series of paintings illustrating scenes of Hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Both series have grown in the same space – the artist’s studio – a place that can too often become hell in itself. The fire of the Dantesque Hell seems to crawl into these classical anatomical studies and envelop the figures with an abrasive red enamel, the main unifying thread of the series. Similarly, the works from the #ClásicosDesollados series also make an appearance, engulfed in flames and hung at the bottom of the Red Studio‘s works.
Albert Navales
BIOGRAPHY
Jordi Diaz Alamà, born in Granollers in 1986, graduated from the Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona. He has also trained in national and international classical art schools such as the Florence Academy of Art (Florence) where he learned the techniques used by the great masters of 19th-century painting. He consolidated his training during a series of stays with contemporary masters of realism such as the Norwegian painter Odd Nerdrum, Guillermo Muñoz Vera or Antonio López.
His personal work involves an impressive display of pictorial resources with a refined and mannerism-free technique that responds to the canon of contemporary classical figuration, continuously investigating new concepts and plasticities.
His artistic vision has also developed thanks to his teaching role at the Barcelona Academy of Art, which he founded in 2013. It is at the Academy where he grows, expands and shares his knowledge of classical methods, along with the idea that these need to continue to be valued as a tool that helps the interpretation and artistic representation of today's world. Alamà points out that classical figuration is not the only way but the most direct one to immerse yourself in the world of sensitivity and creative expression.
In 2017, he faced one of the most important challenges of his career with the creation of the work The Cross of the Jubilee, a monumental commission for the Church of the Dolors in Vic (Spain). In his series #ClásicosDesollados, he merges his implacable technique with bursts of abstraction; cutting, tearing and literally skinning the most iconic works of the great masters from Velázquez to Rembrandt to highlight their inherent modernity.
With the series inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy, Alamà faces again a monument of universal history, anchored in collective memory, and reaffirms his commitment to contemporary realistic figuration.
His works can be found in the collections of the European Museum of Modern Art and the Can Framis Museum in Barcelona and in private collections in Europe, the United States and Australia.
ARTISTIC CV
Solo Exhibitions
2020 'Red Studio'. El Claustre. Figueres
2019 ‘Red Studio’. El Claustre. Girona.
2017 ‘#ClásicosDesollados’. Museu Can Framis. Barcelona.
2015 ‘Reinas de la Noche’. El Claustre. Girona.
2013 ‘Artistas que se venden’. El Claustre. Figueres.
2012 ‘Mujeres modernas’. El Claustre. Girona.
2011 ‘Díaz Alamà: de la enseñanza académica a la obra personal’. Colegio de arquitectos. Mataró.
Latest collective exhibitions
2019
'20 años en 20×20'. MEAM. Barcelona.
'The Wild & the Tame'. Misnoma. Galería Mutuo. Barcelona.
'El Retrato'. Galería Fermín Echauri. Pamplona.
'Spanish Realist Painting'. Saga Prefectural Museum. Japan.
'Spanish Realist Painting'. Hoki Museum. Japan.
'20 años en 20×20'. Galería Artelibre. Zaragoza.
‘#ClásicosDesollados’. Palau de Casavell. Galeria Miquel Alzueta. Girona.
2018
‘#ClásicosDesollados’. Pigment Gallery...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Realist Resin Nude Paintings