Biography & Career Path

For more than three decades this Spanish artist (b. Segovia 1961) has lived in Madrid, while also dividing his time with periods in Paris and more recently Asia. For more than two of those decades he has held exhibitions that take painting as a starting point and go on to explore the relationship between space, artworks and visual depth conveyed to the viewer.

At the start of his Asian launch in 2007, he was already increasing the volume of his paintings which were by then moving towards the medium of sculpture. A clear indication of this is the “Sculpture Square” of Singapore implementing his individual project “Beyond Form”, which he subsequently took to the City Hall of Hong Kong in 2010. In 2012, he transcended the limits of the canvas when he created, during his stay in Shanghai, two large expansive paintings for CEIBS to be displayed in a building designed by Pei, and became their artist in residence.

During that same year, Reguera also showed one of his “pictorial installations” in the Place du Louvre, under the auspices of UNESCO and the Mairie du 1er, within the context of the Diversité Culturelle International Festival. In 2008, he had previously taken part in “Assises”, another official exhibition in the French capital, at the central office of the Ministére de la Culture et de la Communication and more recently, in 2013, at the Paris Espace Eiffel 1 de L'Ecole Supérieure du Commerce Extérieur.

His exhibiting activity extends to other French speaking capitals such as Brussels, where he exhibits regularly, as well as continuing to do so in his London, Paris, Madrid or Hong Kong galleries.

Reguera also captures his previously mentioned travels through photography; prominent, among others, are those to Norway (1998), Australia and New Zealand (2006 and 2007) with the latter becoming the basis of his individual exhibition at the Paris Cervantes Institute entitled “Antipodas” in 2015. Four years ago,he made the exhibition “ Space et Matiére “ at the Cervantes Institute in Brussels.

His collaboration with music was embodied in two performances – one in 1994 and another in 2001 – at the Stedelijk Museum with the Dutch musician Bart Spaan, who composed and played two musical pieces inspired by his paintings. In addition, he collaborated with the French poets Andrée Chedid and Gilles Mentré, and with the Spaniard poet Francisco Pino.

Among his most noteworthy prizes are the one awarded in Paris by L'Acadèmie des Beaux-Arts of L'Institut of France for the Young Painting competition in 1995(La Bourse Annuelle de Peinture), and the “Ojo Critico” presented by the Radio Nacional de España in 2001.

His works are included in collections such as: the CEIBS Collection of Shanghai; the OECD Collection in Paris; the Marc Moyens in Washington D.C.;the Juan March Foundation Museum in Palma,Spain;The Real Madrid Foundation,Spain; the Testimoni Collection of La Caixa,Barcelona; the Brigitte and Jacques Gairard Collection, France; the Ph Delaunay Collection,in Paris; the Cynorrhodon-FALDAC in France;The Contemporary Art Museum Esteban Vicente, Segovia, Spain;the Museum of Contemporary Art City of Madrid or at the Zurich Financial Services in Switzerland. Finally, it is important to highlight the presence of his works in the Royal Collections, part of the National Heritage, where he took part in the Exhibition “Contemporary Art in Palace”, at the Royal Palace of Madrid during 2015-2016.

In 2015,the emblematic UMAG Museum of Hong Kong -The University Museum and Art Gallery of Hong Kong- organized the exhibition with a selection of their artworks from 2001 to 2015,entitled “Blue Expansive Landscape” in cooperation with the Spanish Consulate in Hong Kong. TIn 2016, the Esteban Vicente Museum of Segovia organized his first retrospective exhibition in Spain with the tile of “Alberto Reguera:El Aura de la Pintura. 1990-2015” Alberto Reguera has regulary participated several international art fairs, such ARCOMadrid, Art Paris Art Fair;Brussels Art Fair; Zona Maco México Contemporary Art Fair;, among other.

In 2019 he inaugurated the Hay Festival Segovia 2019, with the pictorial performance “Stelae in transformation”, whose result is permanently exhibited at the Municipal Library of Segovia. Reguera was also selected for the 8th International Biennale of Beijing China 2019, at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing. In 2019 he inaugurated the Hay Festival Segovia 2019, with the pictorial performance “Stelae in transformation”, whose result is permanently exhibited at the Municipal Library of Segovia. Reguera was also selected for the 8th International Biennale of Beijing China 2019, at the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) in Beijing. In 2020 he exhibited in Beijing the expanded painting that he had produced in his live performance at the European Union Delegation to China. The artist was inspired by the 38 European Cultural Routes presented to China in the form of an exhibition. In 2021 he held a solo exhibition, and made a pictorial performance, at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, under the title of "Alberto Reguera: homage to Aert van der Neer.

This same year, he has been selected to participate in the "Mostra Espanha 2021" in Lisbon. Also,in 2021, he was the only Spanish artist selected to represent to Spain, in the exhibition in Egypt, "Cairo International Art Disctrict”. In 2022 he made the poster for the 40th edition of emblematic Autumn Festival of the Community of Madrid. In 2023 he exhibited individually at the University Museum And Art Gallery of Hong Kong, the same project that the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid organized for him in Madrid.

Artist Statement

Alberto Reguera’s work focuses on the exterior landscape, which he contemplates, internalizes and summarizes in his painting. His goal is to extract and concentrate the essence of the vista to create “interior landscapes”. His source of inspiration is the landscapes of his memory of Castile, the Spanish region where he was born in 1961, and his paintings directly reference the Castilian vistas of chromatically austere but simultaneously vibrant broad horizons separating the yellow and golden strips of land from intense blue and white skies invaded by a nearly blinding light. Reguera’s canvasses of his native Castile are reminiscent of Rothko’s paintings. But he also takes inspiration from his travels – travel understood as a way of life – to transform the nature of Norway, New Zealand and Australia into “interior landscapes” as well.

Another source of inspiration is the Romantic artists, especially those who use clouds as an aesthetic starting point from which to develop a rich palette of colors. Reguera uses the volumes, celestial textures and transparency of clouds to represent the abstract universe characteristic of his paintings. In a move to reverse the usual paradigm and give ethereal expression to ponderous landscapes, he takes inspiration from such artists as Caspar David Friedrich, Carus, Constable, Christian Dahl and Turner. The sky is rendered as a concretion of matter and the sea with subtle shades of ultramarine that seem to evaporate from the canvas. The sky is made of transparent layers penetrated by light and the paintings sometimes extend beyond atmospheric representation to become a cosmic landscape.

From the start of his career, Reguera has also been drawn to the French Lyrical Abstraction movement that emerged in the 1950s. He admires painters such as Gérard Schneider, Hartung, Nicolas de Stael, Olivier Debré, Tal-Coat, and Soulages for their ability to turn inner feelings into poetry and express fleeting emotional states in painterly gestures on the canvas. Later on, and without abandoning this influence, Alberto Reguera found inspiration in the color field movement and action painting of the American Abstract Expressionists. Action painting inspired Reguera to compose his “expanding paintings”, which reflect his admiration for such artists as Helen Frankenthaler, Franz Kline, Clyfford Still, Louis Morris and Jackson Pollock.

In this sense, Reguera follows painterly tradition but strives to transcend the restrictive conventional understanding of the term “painting” and to question the significance of the traditional pictorial medium and its frame. He looks for the frame outside the frame. His paintings, with their layers of material and pigments, become “painting objects”. He blurs the distinctions between painting, sculpture and "installation paintings." In this quest, space becomes a major source of inspiration. "Atmospheres with volume", for example, need to extend beyond the frame. Reguera's "expanding paintings" do this by ejecting color and material from the "painting objects" to establish an interaction with the viewer who, depending on how he or she is placed with respect to the work, constructs a personal view of these three-dimensional abstract landscapes. The artist's elliptical and oval paintings aim to achieve the same effect, and their metallic colors pave the way for multiple visual interpretations.