Carlos Arriaga

CARLOS ARRIAGA (Madrid, 1958).
"Calm", 2026.
Oil, pencil, black and white photograph grisaille and transparent resin on canvas.
Signed and dated in the lower left corner. Titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 120 x 150 cm.
Through his camera, Arriaga captures urban landscapes that he later meticulously transforms in the studio, constructing impossible scenarios and imagined cities. His compositions are reminiscent of the work of a visionary urban planner: a perfect megapolis, suspended between reality and dream. Carlos Arriaga's works thus invite us to travel through a reinvented, poetic and timeless Madrid; a city that does not quite belong to our dimension. From an aerial and almost divine perspective, the artist offers us the fleeting experience of contemplating the capital from the sky. Fascinating opposites coexist in his landscapes: nature and architecture, chaos and harmony, apocalypse and rebirth. Without sun or moon, without temporal references, its cities seem to exist in an eternal instant.
Carlos Arriaga, professional photographer and painter, forged much of his artistic career in New York, where he studied photography, cinematography, drawing and painting at the prestigious Arts Students League. Later, he continued his training in Madrid, at the Arauco Foundation, under the direction of the renowned master Guillermo Muñoz Vera.
Since 1980 he has developed a solid career as a professional photographer, collaborating with leading advertising agencies and with some of the most influential fashion magazines and general publications of the national scene. In parallel, his pictorial work has been exhibited in important international spaces and fairs, such as Affordable Art Fair in Brussels (2014 and 2019), as well as in Cartel Gallery in Malaga and Pepe Pisa Gallery in Madrid, among others. His talent has been recognized with various awards, including the XIV Carlos de Haes Plastic Arts Competition (Madrid, 1996), the CXIX Salón de Otoño (Madrid, 2002) and the XXV BMW Painting Prize (Madrid, 2010).
In 2015 his career takes a decisive turn: he begins to experiment with a unique technique that fuses oil and black and white photography, becoming his most distinctive artistic hallmark. Inspired by grisaille, the ancient monochrome technique used by medieval Flemish masters to recreate the bas-relief effect, Arriaga reinterprets this classic language from a profoundly contemporary gaze.