José Manuel Ballester
Madrid, Spain. 1960.
Painter and photographer, graduated in Fine Arts. Ballester is National Photography Award 2010 and National Engraving Award 1999. His artistic career began in painting with special interest in the technique of the Italian and Flemish schools of the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Since 1990, he began to combine painting and photography.
Ballester is not an artist of architectures, although most of his works are often inspired by them. He is an artist of spaces, silences and reflective experiences. In each composition the author seems to underline presences that no longer exist; perhaps they are gone, or have not yet arrived. Restless spirits, metaphysical scenarios, watchmen of new sources of life, last dwellings.
He has received, among others, the Francisco de Goya Painting Prize (2008), the National Engraving Prize (1999) and the Culture Prize of the Community of Madrid (2008). In 2010 he was awarded the Spanish National Photography Prize by the Ministry of Culture. The jury awarded the prize by majority for his personal trajectory, for his unique interpretation of architectural space and light and an outstanding renovation in photographic techniques.
His works are part of the collections of the Reina Sofía Museum, Marugame Museum of Spanish Contemporary Art in Japan, IVAM in Valencia, Miami Art Museum and Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation in Miami, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, 21st Century Museum in Kentucky, Würth Museum in Logroño, Fundación Telefónica, Banco Espíritu Santo, Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Coca-Cola Foundation, among others.
