User:Ricardo Sánchez Grande/sandbox

Ricardo Sánchez Grande (painter)
Ricardo Sánchez Grande (Ávila, 3 April 1955) is probably known as one of today's most influential Spanish painters. Sánchez is a realist painter who has been known in the art world for his famous paintings on railway stations, topic which has achieved important awards at the national level.

Education

His formative stage began in Ávila at the Arts & Crafts School during 1972 and 1973. Then in 1974, he moved to Sevilla to start the degree of Fine Arts of Santa Isabel of Hungary, where he performed the first four courses, and later on, he moved to Madrid in order to study the specialty of painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. During these years, the artist developed his realistic style, influenced by the works of the great masters of the realist painting like Velázquez, Rembrandt, Antonio Moro, Leonardo da Vinci, Vermeer. In the late 1970s Sánchez got a scholarship from the Excellency Council of Ávila to study engraving. Finally, during the academic years 1987/1988 and 1988/1889 he made the PhD courses at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid).

His work

Although Sánchez is an eminently realistic artist, his professional concern and investigative spirit developed during his career, has occasionally made that he experimented with other types of painting such as abstract painting in his series: “diaclasas”, “espacios inhabitados” and “estructuras oníricas”, but always returning to realist painting.

While originally the main themes are still lifes, portraits and landscapes, Sánchez is known for his paintings about the railways stations, this topic was started when Sánchez was twenty years old in 1975. However, the paintings of the artist are sharing in different subjects as following: “paisajes místicos”, “desnudos tras la puerta”, “paisajes para el pájaro solitario”, “tower” and “cucurrumachos” as well as the others above mentioned.

As techniques, Sánchez prefers to use oil, the grisailles applied to drawing and other mixed techniques. Nowadays his works are in public and private collections in Spain, France, Switzerland, Argentina, United States and United Kingdom.

Exhibitions

Nowadays, the artist has exhibited his work in 28 individual exhibitions and 38 collective exhibitions both at national and international level (e.g. Chicago, Munich, Havana, Miami and Brussels). Among all of his exhibitions, certainly notable due to their importance are the exhibitions in: Palacio de los Guzmanes in Ávila (organized by Excellency Council of Ávila), at the Monasterio de Nuestra Señora de Prado of Valladolid (organised by the Junta de Castilla y León) and the exhibitions sponsored by Caja Postal (San Sebastián, La Coruña and Jaen), and Caja Duero (Zamora, Soria, Valladolid, Cáceres y Salamanca), all of them with train-themed.

Awards

His professional career has been awarded many times with prestigious awards and honourable mentions. Since 1983, when he got his first award (award of "Artes Figurativas" in Salamanca), his work has been recognized in high-status awards like: Caja Castilla la Mancha painting award, award of the army, the International Biennial of sport in fine arts or the BMW award for painting. Recently, Sánchez has been recognized with the Díaz Caneja paint award in 2010 and the Foundation Villalar Castilla y León award (2012).