José Luis Fariñas

Fantastic stampede, illustration, story of mysticism and wonder or, simply, the gloat at the constructive possibilities of imagination, José Luis Fariñas’s oeuvre is unexpected and attractive. As if he were a medieval miniaturist, he strives to build narrations without exact reference, which lack of the immediacy of the mimesis or the naturalistic logic. His world is a stylized version of ethereal beings, brimming with atmospheres of dry aromas, full induction to airs of levitation.

His meticulous drawing is held in details such as the imitation of the lightness and fluidity. Composed of thin, regal and hurrying lines, it is noticeable due to the beauty of its spirit. In the confines of his imaginary world everything is complete and iridescent. Soft inks complement that inexact sense of mirage and polished illusion.

The construction of this particular universe is a representative strategy that seeks to give corporeality to the incidental and fragile world of elemental subjectivity and emotions. It is a poetical structure in which the metaphor is displaced by the personification, and the most pristine feelings are built as if they were enigmatic and attractive elders, scholars, wizards, emperors of splendid figures and amazing creatures. Hence power works as a discursive means: is the reign of unlikeness and intelligence; it is the expressive ruse, selected to denote the capital character of the human subjective production, it is the court in which the elemental glow of the human condition is enthroned. It is impossible to ignore the expressionist back up of this creator who is close to the most unnoticed Goya, the one who found in the field of dreams the elemental flesh of the monsters of reason. His macabre side, his cognitive vastness and his great sensitivity are unnoticed. José Luis Fariñas illustrates the inner mysteries of the human soul.



  • Skirting Apocalypse is nothing less than Fariñas’s personal interpretation of the end of all things. The impression one takes awake from skirting the Apocalypse is that of an intensely original artist working at the peak of his power. Like taken out of a book, José Fariñas’s work entangles fiction and reality, art and life, and the fundamental talent of drawing enhancing the canvas.
  • Fariñas’s Dürer-like detailed, precise, expressive drawings and watercolours, does not clash with the subordination that the art of illustrating demands, delves incisively into horror and chaos.
  • Nothing in Fariñas’s large drawings is left out of place –everything seem to be fashioned together in a fantastic machinery made with grotesque creatures that populated the nightmares of Bosch and Brueghel.
  • El dibujo de Fariñas se vuelve cada vez más hacia una forma alusiva y ambigua de trazo preciso, flexible, fluido y rápido.
  • Su línea fluida, suave y a la vez enérgica, se torna fuente engendradora e infinita en las criaturas vitales de Fariñas, unidas por un organicismo indivisible capaz de fusionar los actos de estos seres y conducirlos hacia ese agujero negro: un mundo insólito donde lo inverosímil es quizás el embrión originario.
  • En las obras de Fariña nos inquieta el valor de las líneas en las formas esbozadas, definidas sutilmente hasta un límite físico del pincel.
  • Las fantasías resultantes embellecen el caos en detalle meticuloso. Las abundantes referencias ocultas en sus pinturas se toman a menudo de la Toráh y de la Cábala.
  • Los trazos de sus figuras son tan estilizados y se enlazan en un juego de formas tan complejo, que a veces resulta imposible reconocer por sus rasgos estructurales el tipo de naturaleza que representan, quizás sea por eso que sus piezas son de una belleza tan extrañamente misteriosa. Concurrencias de la forma que operan en las posibilidades de la materia seminal.
  • As it was for Boticelli and also for Dürer, the drawing is essential in Fariñas’s work, nevertheless, the basis technique in his art is watercolor, an eminently pictorial skill.
  • José Luis Fariñas constituye un maestro en el trabajo con las líneas, las transparencias y la superposición de imágenes.
  • Like taken out of a book, Fariñas’s work entangles fiction and reality, art and life, and the fundamental talent of drawing enhancing the canvas. In every detail his poetry goes on, because José Luis Fariñas is also a writer of eternal verses.
  • His work is heiress of Euripides, Milton, Dante Alighieri, of the great universal writers.
  • El artista rememora pasajes bíblicos con el fin de problematizar sobre diversas cuestiones del desarrollo humano en el orden espiritual.