MEXICO CITY.- Luis Adelantado Gallery presents the first solo show in Mexico, by the national prize of art, Darío Villalba(1939, San Sebastián, Spain).

An artist that has been a part of the gallery almost from the beginning, Villalba is an inescapable reference to the understanding of art, after the Informalism generation of the fifties up until now. His work criticizes the artistic media in which he unfolds, making it clear that it is not the style, but the artist which defines his work. Always up to date, and in constant dialogue with the young artists, the work of Darío Villalba explores the border between photography and painting. He also explores the borders of the object, installation and sculpture. In 1970, at the XXXV Biennial of Venice, he presented his "encapsulados" that brought him international fame and artistic significance. Because of the constant excellence of his work, he has been awarded with diverse recognitions, among them the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2002. His work has been exposed in many of the most important museums in the world, as the MoMA, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, among many others many.

This show which spans a wide part of his latest years of production includes around 50 big format canvases and 100 of his “documentos básicos (Sourse material)”. In some way it’s a "mental portrait" of the artist, a "retrospective exhibition" that shows the coherence and interest of a long and fruitful life, dedicated to artistic creation".

The current show is a review of the work of one of the most influential artists of Spanish art of the last decades. Darío Villalba constitutes a reference in Spanish contemporary art thanks to his pioneering use of photography as painting, most present in current art, and his continuous dialogue with the avant-gardes. For this show, Villalba has made a selection of the most significant pieces of his work, many of which were shown in the great retrospective at the Museum Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, creating "a now, an all, a self-portrait"