BARCELONA, 1958 Nacho Amor

The taste for the surface and the material, together with the contrast and chiaroscuro, has been outlining an intimate style and absolutely its own and with character.

Nacho Amor develops his first formation academic in Barcelona. He attended the EINA School for a few years, along with the training in the Faculty of Geography and History.

In 1979 he settled in Aramengo d’Asti (Italy), focusing his training at the Laboratorio di Restauro Nicola, remaining in it until the end of 1984 and collaborating in the Restoration of works exhibited in different museums and Italian public entities. He works on works exhibited at: The Sabauda Gallery, Civic Museum, Egyptian Museum and Royal Palace in the city of Turin. He also intervenes in the cathedrals of Asti, Vercelli, Chieri and Novara, in the Olivetti complex in Ivrea, in the Langosto Palace in Casale, on the churches of San Pedro de Porto Venere, of Santa Cruz de Bosco Marengo and in others museums like the Medieval one in the city of Bologna. 

In 1985 he opened his own studio in Barcelona collaborating with the Generalitat de Catalunya, museums and with public and private entities. 

He moved to Valldoreix, Sant Cugat del Vallès, in 1994 where he lives and has his studio currently.

He has been exhibiting his painting since 1996 and this intense experience in the restoration of works of art, allows him to enter the world of material and ancient and modern textures, knowing first-hand colors and techniques from different eras: from ancient times Egyptian to the contemporary of famous artists from all over the world, going through great masterpieces of gothic and renaissance.

His direct contact with all these works has given the artist an experience that is impossible to separate from his current work. The taste for the surface and the material, together with the contrast and chiaroscuro, has been outlining an intimate style and absolutely its own and with character.  

In these years he has exhibited in different galleries, both national and foreign and his works are in different private collections in Europe, America, Africa and Middle East. They can also be seen in some entities such as; Palau Solterra-Vila Casas Foundation (Torroella de Mongrí, Girona), Testimoni Collection-“La Caixa” Foundation (Barcelona), Drawing Museum-Sabiñanigo (Huesca), International University of Catalonia-UIC (Barcelona), Mainel Foundation (Valencia), Harvard Business School-Harvard University (Boston USA), EMD- École de Management (Marseille, France).

NACHO AMOR
by Nuri Peró, Art Historian and Artist

We all have in our lives an emotional and affective load that conditions all possible objectivity in our criteria and appraisals. It is impossible to avoid a whole personal and family background, education and experiences that condition both for better and for worse. The trick is to know how to discern what you assimilate as your own and what is foreign to your life, your beliefs, your principles and values. This is how Nacho Amor builds himself: in a very deep mysticism in Creation.

Nacho Amor, already in his youth, was sinking his hands into matter, colors, textures, antiquity, history. And from the hills of Aramengo d’Asti he began to establish a subtle, deep dialogue, almost ignored by him, between them and the work of the Creator. Everything was taking shape in his mind without realizing that he was interpreting in his eyes, in his ears and in his hands an image that would gradually shape his work. Perennially unsatisfied, each work never ends in itself; each work extends and evokes all those that follow it and are derived from those that precede it.  He hides in his own intimacy and elaborates an infinity of “shots” as if they were micro paintings, without even touching the brush.  And he frees himself from those spaces kept in his mind and heart, and captures them unhurriedly, softly. The art of making art for him is a responsibility that falls into hands that need to interpret but that feel small, tiny, even unworthy of it.

Nacho Amor makes no noise and subtly drags a surface with his brush so that it ends up crying out and exploding in intense patches of light and shadow. It is the edge itself. It is the rupture, the discord, the breakdown, the abrupt reality of existence, which transforms this thought into the chiaroscuro of nature. He does not paint trees, nor skies, nor waters…. only opens with the power of white the light of the objects of creation.

Tip: Do not look… listen because they are eternal seconds that know how to fill, leave and enter, as if light and shadow whisper to you. Don’t look, listen how the White explodes among the trees, which dances in the sky forming immensity. White that whistles in the water and plays with sand and sky, and wallows with crests that form music.

“You enter a meeting of harmony and balance, seeking to give peace to your longings and rescuing an ever-present reality.

Whistles in your ears this salty breeze and whistles you the height and thrills you the depth, the strength soaks you…. the silence; both where many are, and where dwells but the world.

Truth that surpasses all concept and allows in your hands this sweet consolation full of life, intense, each one standing in seconds of eternity; each one distinct, unique and all one: all, the truth.”