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MONREALISM

Ignasi Monreal

FROM COMICS TO FASHION

FROM VELAZQUEZ TO PHOTOSHOP

FROM  PLATS BRUTS TO WIFI .

A LIFE-LONG DREAM: DRAWING THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

 

He was born in Barcelona in 1990 and studied Comics and Illustration. He has lived in London, Madrid and Rome and is now living in Lisbon.
Practically speaking, a sort of Grand Tour all over Europe. If you are a fan of those great classic Spanish artists such as Velázquez, Dalì, Goya and Picasso, add Hieronymus Bosch and Van Eyck to the list because you’ll soon find the works of the artist that we are about to introduce you to just as intriguing. Ignasi Monreal needs no great introductions because several years ago he achieved international fame thanks to his multidisciplinary art which combines pop and classical culture with a highly personal ironic twist. Go take a peek at his website – forever tongue-in-cheek and funny.
It was thanks to an Instagram competition, launched in 2015 by Alessandro Michele, the Creative Director at Gucci, #guccigram, that Ignasi was discovered as an illustrator. Since that very moment, a professional adoration has sprung forth between these two creative personalities. They collaborated magnificently on the Gucci 2018 Spring/Summer campaign – Utopian Fantasy – in which Monreal reinterpreted some of the great old master- pieces such as “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch, “The Arnolfini Portrait” by Jan Van Eyck and “Ophelia” by Millais by dressing them all in Gucci, all fully and digitally painted. For the creation of the Gucci campaign, Monreal was short-list-ed for a Beazley Designs of the Year Award.
Following this period of work with the Italian fashion house, Monreal worked with other much-celebrated brands like Cartier, Bulgari, Moncler, J.W. Anderson, Zara, Mercedes-Benz, Airbnb, Meta and Adobe.
Major international publications like The New Yorker, Visionaire and El Pais commissioned him to provide editorial pieces for them as did the publishing house Assouline which entrusted him with the illustrations of its books, Four Seasons and AlUla. Over the last few years, Monreal has grappled with a whole host of different artistic techniques: digital art, painting, ceramics, product and set design, creative direction, animation and film. He is also known for his murals that have covered the walls of buildings all over the world from New York, Chicago, London and Paris to Milan, Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Spanish artist has moved on from digital art to analogue art, painting his Plats Bruts in oil. He showed them in his first exhibition at the Fresh Gallery in Madrid, in 2019. Also in 2019, he worked with Jack Wooley, a London based artist and ceramist and Bernardo Moleón, a former Strategic Planner at Apple, on the creation of the exhibition Mi manchi come il Wifi, (“I miss you like Wifi”), in which the artists strove to cast light upon the new divinities that had sprung up in the wake of Technology and to invite people to reflect upon a supposed omnipresence of the Internet as the highest authority in our possession for those moments in which we require answers to all the questions that mount up inside us every single day of our lives. Towards the end of 2020, Monreal undertook his first public work of art: Habemus WiFi, a QR code 2.5 x 2.5 metres in size, realised in hand-painted ceramics which provides free internet in Plaza de España in Madrid, and which comes to life through human interaction, changing its appearance in reaction to the amount of people who are connected. In 2022, Monreal created a new series of Plats Bruts and he showed them at Palazzo Monti, in Brescia. The name of the exhibition was: Sobremesa, an invitation to enjoy “the magic spell of conviviality”. Also in 2022, the artist turned his hand to the creation of a NFT – Bloom – a dynamic digital garden that bursts into flower if the market goes up and wilts if the market goes down.
This work was inspired by the Tulip Mania that raged during the Dutch Golden Age, when the introduction of the bulbs of those famous flowers shot the prices for them up to the skies only to see them plummet just a few years later. Furthermore, this multi-faceted Spanish artist has also made inroads into the world of the music industry and has worked with artists Dua Lipa, Rosalia, FKA Twigs and Christine and the Queens. More recently, he has collaborated with the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome, on the creation of set designs for the ballets of Swan Lake and La Bayadère.

© Gucci, © Ignasi Monreal

Dear readers, are you ready to catapult yourselves into this universe à la Monreal?

ADP: Let’s start from the beginning. How did you approach the world

of art? Through your family, school, or in some other way?

IM: My mother claims that I first tried my hand at art when I was just two years old, in 1992, by drawing Coby, the mascot of the Barcelona Olympics. Although I did go on to study painting, as a young adult my focus shifted to other creative mediums such as comics, illustration, animation, design, etc. Even though I’ve been a painter for as long as I can remember, it wasn’t until I moved to London at age 22 that I seriously considered using my artistic abilities to make a profession.

ADP: What immediately fascinated you about art as an aesthetic and as a medium?

IM: My approach to painting has always been natural; I rarely have a clear idea of what I’m doing, but I can usually just go with my gut. In fact, my paintings suffer when I allow my thoughts to interfere with the process, thus painting has become a form of meditation in which I practise emptying my mind so that the painting can paint itself.

ADP: You manage to ennoble every subject with your art. From simple people with smartphones  to everyday, convivial scenes like your Plat Bruts. How do you relate to your inspirations? What makes you feel closer to a Goya or a Velasquez, instead of others? How do you rework these masters in your art?

IM: I admire the works of those who have influenced me, but I also use them to set the bar for the quality of my own and others’ creations. The fact that their work can still move us after all these years is a testament to its timeless quality, which is what I admire most about them. I’ve even turned to them for inspiration in times of creative crisis; I relocated to Rome in part because that’s where Velazquez perfected his technique, and I decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a try myself.

ADP: Oil on canvas, tiles, analogue or digital. Tell us about the evolution of your technique in reverse: with your digital art world, you have created a unique and always recognisable style, which you have often called Monrealism. From Gucci to Assouline, from Bulgari to Dua Lipa. What did you want to tell with your digital art and what do you want to communicate with your analogue art instead? Do you think you will want to explore this technique − or others − more in the future?

IM: Although digital and traditional painting share some similarities, I do not think they can be compared on an equal footing. Because of their respective strengths − digital’s propensity for limitless replication and analogue’s emphasis on uniqueness − I believe both to be of equal worth and importance; the key is finding the proper concept for each media. My tendency to easily become bored leads me to explore new pursuits; even if they aren’t my speciality, it’s exciting to experiment. 

© Ignasi Monreal, © Giorgio Benni

ADP: Tell us about your series Plat Bruts. How did it come about and what does it want to tell us?

IM: As a series, Plats Bruts is a chronicle of meals and shared experiences and a celebration of the mundane beauty of everyday life. The untranslatable Spanish term “sobremesa” means “dolce far niente,” or pleasant idleness, during the period of time immediately following a meal. I began working on it as a way to hone my skills with oil paints, since still life is a popular place to begin with when exploring a new medium. My latest Plats Bruts iteration, Sobremesa, was recently shown in an exhibition at Palazzo Monti. As a departure from my earlier exhibition, in which every piece was life sized, I painted gigantic dirty dishes for this one, giving the works a surreal quality.

ADP: What was it like working for Gucci and Alessandro Michele?

IM: Gucci changed everything for me, Alessandro gave me creative freedom and trusted in my vision, which at the time I didn’t think was valid. Those projects showed me that I was capable of creating works that mattered and had a worldwide resonance unlike any other work I had ever done.

ADP: How do you feel when you work?

IM: It depends, but there’s a lot of worry about picking the wrong choice. So many opportunities are missed when an idea is materialised that I sometimes find I lose sight of the larger picture in favour of focusing on the immediate challenge at hand. When I push through, however, I’m left with a sensation that rivals any high you may have from even the most amusing of drugs.

ADP: Do you have any particular rituals in your day-to-day?

IM: I work at night, while everything is asleep, and I can concentrate on my painting without distraction.

ADP: Incoming exhibitions for this winter or next year?

IM: At the moment I’m taking a sabbatical and I’ve been focusing solely on designing the set for a new production of La Bayadere at the Opera di Roma.

ADP: Relationship with other arts. You also express yourself with video and animation. Are you a fan of other art forms? of which one in particular?

IM: Even though architecture is my favourite art form, I’m envious of music’s capacity to convey an entire range of feelings with a single note. Whereas music can move you without forcing you to think, painting requires a more cerebral approach. Poetry’s power to evoke abstract figurative images fascinates me as well, especially in comparison to painting, which can only depict things in a literal way.

ADP: I’m interested to talk about the world of opera and your experience. Do you usually go to the opera? Tell us about your experience and how has your approach been to set design in Rome?

IM: My partner is a ballet dancer. Therefore, we frequent the opera on a regular basis. The music and dancing are wonderful, but it’s the sets and staging that truly draw me in. The thought of having other artists enter my paintings fascinates me, particularly those with exceptional skills like those seen at the opera.

© Ignasi Monreal, © Fabrizio Sansoni, Opera di Roma, the Swan Lake

ADP: What do you think about the current art world and the NFT market?

IM: There seems to be little room for innovation in traditional mediums, but the digital world is bringing about new ways to create and think; as artists, we have the responsibility to be bold and push the limits of this new method of creating, and to think of NFTs as more than just an investment.

ADP: How is life in Lisbon? In which way is it different from Madrid, London or Rome for an artist?

IM: From a creative standpoint, each city offers something new, and I feel like each has added a new chapter to my work. For instance, moving to London gave me the courage to pursue a career in painting. In Rome, I began working with oils and held my first exhibitions and in Lisbon, I began using larger canvases and painting murals. I’m not sure where I’ll go after this – maybe Paris?

ADP: Irony is part of your art and your approach. I love your website, every step of the way. What makes you laugh the most?

IM: The absurd.

ADP: What is Discovery for you?

IM: Discovery is the adventure of sailing through ignorance.



Further Reading

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