Juan Uslé

(Spanish, born 1954)

Juan Uslé is a contemporary Spanish painter known for his complex arrangements of abstract forms floating in pictorial space. Wavering between repetitive brush marks and rhizome-like shapes, the artist culls inspiration from literature, film, poetry, and everyday life during his working process. “Our minds and bodies need to actively participate in the experience of contemplating a work, it demands your total attention and a particular kind of effort—it’s almost a commitment,” he has said of painting. “I don’t think too many people are willing or prepared to try to empty themselves out in order to dissect a painting. It’s certainly easier to get swayed by the pull and banality of the mass media’s images.” Born in 1954 in Santander, Spain, he went on to study fine arts at the Polytechnic University in Valencia, graduating in 1977. Moving to New York in the late 1980s, Uslé absorbed the new influences he found around him including the works of Forest Bess and Albert Pinkham Ryder. He currently lives and works between Cantabria, Spain and New York, NY. The artist’s works are held in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Gallery in London, the Guggenheim Bilbao, and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, among others.