José Manuel Ballester

José Manuel Ballester (Madrid, Spain, 1960), painter, photographer, BM in Fine Arts in 1984 by the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, has the Spanish Photography Award 2010. His artistic career began with a particularly attention in the technique of the Italian and Flemish painting of the XV and XVIII centuries. Since 1990, he started to blend painting and photography. We can highlight, between his numerous exhibitions, Lugares de paso (Valencia, 2003), Setting Out (New York, 2003), or Habitación 523 (Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, 2005) and recently Fervor de metrópolis (Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2011), La abstracción de la realidad (Sala Alcalá 31, Comunidad de Madrid and DA2, Salamanca, 2011) and Espacios ocultos in the Spanish Academy (Rome, 2012). He has took part in numerous group exhibitions in arts fairs as ARCO, Art Chicago, Artforum Germany, Paris Photo and Art Miami and in cities such as Dallas, Paris, Miami, São Paulo, Dubai, Beijing, Shanghai, Toronto and many others. He has been awarded with the Spanish Etching Award in 1999, with the prize Pintura Villa de Madrid Francisco de Goya in 2006, and later in 2008 with the Photograpy Prize of the Comunidad de Madrid. In 2010 he received the Spanish Photography Award from the Ministry of Culture. The jury voted for him by majority because of his personal history, his very peculiar interpretation of architectural space and light, and his outstanding renovation of photographic techniques. His artworks belong to the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Marugame Genichiro-Inokuma Museum of Contemporary Art in Japan, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation of Miami, China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, Museo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, 21 Century Museum of Kentucky, Museo Würth of Logroño, Telefónica Foundation, Banco Espírito Santo, Museum Guggenheim of Bilbao and Coca Cola Foundation between many others.