Biography

Antuán EL8

«I paint so I do not have to lie entirely.»

Born in Madrid in 1970, he soon understood that his task was not simply to look at the world, but to take it apart. He has worked with record labels, creating covers, identities and visual worlds for bands including Ska-P, M-Clan, Barón Rojo and Hamlet. His line has dressed records, T-shirts and stages: surfaces where noise becomes image.

He shared exhibitions with Fabio McNamara and with photographer Luis Baylón, whom he joined in Colectivo Interruptus, showing work at La Boca del Lobo in Madrid and Sala Naranja in Valencia.

In 1992 he received recognition from Editorial Turner for correcting, designing and laying out the Manuscript of Saint John of the Cross. His visual language has also attracted Schweppes, El Corte Inglés and Movistar, though he has never allowed advertising to decide who he should be.

Antuán listens to a rumour that not everyone can hear: he calls it his eighth sense. It guides his hand and marks the frontier between obedience and creation. Intuitive and untamed, he belongs to no school, because no school would have admitted him. He does not seek recognition: stillness is what unsettles him.

He paints, designs, records, plays bass, films and breathes with the same urgency with which others try to sleep. He knows that the price of being a true artist is to die a little whenever he does not create—and the reward is to be reborn as many times as necessary.

Because if a cat has seven lives, Antuán EL8 has one more. In each of them he returns changed, but with the same gaze: one that neither lies nor disrespects the truth.