Juan Carlos Mestre

JUAN CARLOS MESTRE (León, 1957).
"Crossing to the new extreme", 2021.
Mixed media on paper.
Signed in the lower left corner. Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 76 x 57 cm.
Spanish poet and visual artist, he studied Information Sciences in Barcelona, where he graduated with the thesis Escritura y realidad en el periodismo contemporáneo (Writing and reality in contemporary journalism), a work that anticipates his interest in the tensions between word, representation and experience.
He burst onto the poetry scene in 1982 with the publication of Siete poemas escritos junto a la lluvia (Seven poems written by the rain), followed a year later by La visita de Safo (Sappho's visit). In 1985 he won the prestigious Adonais Prize for Antífona del otoño en el Valle del Bierzo, a work that consolidated his critical recognition and demonstrated a poetic voice of remarkable maturity, deeply rooted in landscape and memory.
During his stay in Chile he published Las páginas del fuego (1987), a book that broadened his aesthetic and vital horizon. On his return to Spain he published El arca de los dones, Los cuadernos del paraíso and La poesía ha caído en desgracia, the latter of which was awarded the Jaime Gil de Biedma Prize in 1992 and is considered a lucid reflection on the place of poetry in contemporary times. Subsequently, his time in Rome as a fellow of the Spanish Academy gave rise to La tumba de Keats, awarded the Jaén Poetry Prize in 1999, where the dialogue with the European literary tradition acquires a special symbolic density.
Parallel to his poetic work, he has developed a solid career as a visual artist, holding individual exhibitions of his plastic work in Spain, France, Italy, Chile and the United States. This double condition of poet and visual creator reinforces the interdisciplinary character of his production, in which word and image are conceived as complementary spaces of aesthetic exploration and critical thought.