Juan Bautista NIETO ✿

'E non aspetto pirati
e neanche ritorni di marinai
è la luna che balla con me stasera
mentre sorseggia bendata
la coppa del fato
e mi mesce il languido sapore di te...'

~ Catherine La Rose ~

Juan Bautista Nieto was born in Lora el Rio, near Seville in 1963. Following in his father’s footsteps he studied to be a doctor at the Faculty of Medicine in Seville, which in later years would prove a formative influence on his understanding and appreciation of the human anatomy. On the death of his father, Nieto gave up medicine in favour of his secret passion for painting and drawing embarked on a series of studies at the Fine Arts Faculty of Seville.

His work presents an exaggerated obsession with recreating a reality, which reaches beyond the precise representation of a photograph. He transcends the theme and concept of hyperrealism using it as a vehicle to take us onto another level wherein he achieves an extraordinary kind of intensity, which paradoxically creates a distinct feeling of unreality. His technique is equally obsessive and both demanding and exhaustive.

Every facet of his subject is depicted with a minute and impersonal exactitude of detail. His materials are oil and acrylic combined with air brush techniques employed to build an accumulation of delicate and continuous layers of shades and multiple tones of light, shadows and density. In common with other hyperrealist painters, he produces very few paintings each year and his large works take between six to nine months to complete. With some justification Nieto is regarded within Spanish art circles as one of the foremost exponents of hyperrealism in Spain today.