Juan José Aquerreta

(Pamplona, 1946)

Author's artworks
20th-21st Century Spanish

After training at the School of Arts and Crafts of Pamplona and the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he was a pupil of Antonio López (1936), Aquerreta’s professional career took off in the sixties with his earliest solo exhibition, held in Pamplona (Sala de la Caja de Ahorros Municipal, 1966) and then later in Madrid (Galería Sen, 1973), after which he began to accrue critical acclaim. From 1983 onward, he combined his art practice with teaching at the School of Arts and Crafts of Pamplona and at the University of Navarra. The profile of his work received a substantial boost when he joined the roster of Galería Marlborough in 1998.

Aquerreta creates a highly personal body of work that aims to convey a sense of serenity and timelessness, mainly through painting and drawing but also sculpture on occasion. One can clearly discern manifold influences in his practice, ranging from classical sculpture, Byzantine art and Italian masters like Giotto (1267-1337) or Piero della Francesca (1416/17-1492), to avant-garde artists like Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) or Isabel Baquedano (1929-2018), who also taught at the School of Arts and Crafts of Pamplona and with whom he became a close friend even though she was never his teacher.

His painting is underpinned by a strong religiousness, not just in its references but also because it was for him a path towards self-knowledge and a quest for truth and eternity. Aquerreta’s practice entails an exercise in meditative observation in which he endeavours to decipher motifs and to find meaning. This explains the prevalence of portraiture in his earliest phases, until the nineties, presenting the sitters as solid figures with simplified features that call to mind ancient Greek statuary. He would later make incursions into landscape and still life, also understood as self-portraits of sorts which, with the passing of time, become simpler and clearer, dispensing with the accessory.

Aquerreta has work in major Spanish collections, including Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Museo San Telmo in San Sebastian, Museo de Navarra, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Bank of Spain. He has also obtained important distinctions, like the National Visual Arts Award in 2001.