Juan José Aquerreta

JUAN JOSÉ AQUERRETA (Pamplona, 1946).
"Golden still life", 2001.
Oil on canvas glued to board.
Presents on the back informative label of the Artur Ramon Gallery (Barcelona).
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 46 x 55 cm; 68 x 76 cm (frame).
Juan José Aquerreta Maestu was born in 1946 in Pamplona, from a young age he showed a deep inclination towards the plastic arts. His artistic training began at the School of Arts and Crafts of his hometown, where between 1962 and 1964 he acquired the basics of drawing and painting. Later, in 1966, he continued his apprenticeship at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts in Madrid, one of the most prestigious centers in the country. There he consolidated his interest in rigorous observation and introspective treatment of form, influenced by masters such as Antonio López. Years later, he returned to Pamplona, and since 1983 he also devoted himself to teaching, giving drawing classes in the same school where he had begun his artistic career.
Throughout his career, Aquerreta has developed a work of remarkable coherence and depth, focused on the exploration of the human figure, the portrait and everyday objects treated with a meditative gaze. His painting, intimate and silent, combines a precise technique with a poetic sense of matter and time. Among his most relevant exhibitions are those held at the Galería Sen in Madrid in 1973, the Galería 16 in San Sebastián in 1984, and the Galería Gamarra y Garrigues in Madrid in 1995. In later years he presented works such as Últimamente (2009) at the Marlborough Gallery in Madrid and Contratiempo (2008) at the Sala de Arte Robayera in Miengo, Cantabria.
His career has been recognized with numerous awards and distinctions. In 1966 he obtained a scholarship from the Diputación Foral de Navarra, and a year later he received the Premio Extraordinario de Pintura Moreno Higueras in the class of Antonio López, as well as the Second Prize in the III Gran Premio Internacional de Pintura Vasca de San Sebastián. In the following decades he was distinguished with awards in national and international competitions, such as the International Contemporary Art Competition of the Diputación Foral de Navarra (1983), the Prix International d'Art Contemporain de Monte-Carlo (2000) and the Grand Prix de S.A.S. Le Prince Rainier III (2001). That same year he received the National Prize for Plastic Arts, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and in 2003 he received the Prince of Viana Prize for Culture. Two years later he was awarded the Tomás Caballero Prize, consolidating his position as one of the most outstanding figures in Spanish contemporary art.
Aquerreta's work is distinguished by its serenity and attention to detail, traits that reflect a profound reflection on the nature of art and the act of looking. His painting transcends the merely representational to enter a spiritual and symbolic dimension, where each form seems to contain a meditation on the passage of time and the persistence of beauty in the everyday.