JOAN RIPOLLÉS, (Castellón, 1932).Untitled.Engraving, copy 32/50.Signed and numbered.Size: 73 x 53 cm; 91 x 71 cm (frame).Known by his second surname or as "the Blessed Ripo", Joan García Ripollés discovered his passion for painting when, while still very young and in the middle of the post-war period, he started working in an industrial painting workshop. From then on he devoted himself to painting at night, and later took drawing classes at the Ribalta secondary school in Castellón. After his debut in a group exhibition held in 1951 at the Caja de Ahorros de Castellón, 1954 was a turning point in his career, as a result of a trip to Paris where he made contact with the artistic circles of the city. He remained in the French capital until 1963, and during these years he produced twelve paintings for the church of Saint-Paul de Trigan in the Commune des Chaulegnes. However, he was unable to give up industrial painting until 1958, when he joined the Drouand David gallery in Paris, one of the most prestigious in the world. He organised his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona in 1962, and in 1967 he travelled to New York, where he exhibited and sold his entire collection to The William Haber Art Collection. That same year, the New York dealer Leon Amiel, of the Larrouse gallery, acquired all his work, something which was repeated on his trip to Japan. From that moment on, he embarked on a dazzling international career that has taken his work all over the world. In 1977 he moved to Holland, where he produced the engravings for the book in homage to Josep Plà. Between 1986 and 1987 he devoted himself to sculpture, producing sixty-two works in ceramic and bronze which were exhibited at the 1988 edition of ARCO. He has organised solo exhibitions not only in Spain, Paris and New York, but also in Mexico, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, various American cities, Germany and Japan. He is currently the exclusive artist of The William Haber Art in New York and the Galerie Drouand in Paris. In 2000 he was awarded the Premio de las Artes de la Comunidad Valenciana. Ripollés is today one of the most international Spanish artists, and also one of the most complete, as he has worked brilliantly in painting, sculpture and engraving. After an initial stage of correct figuration in which he recreated the landscape of his homeland, his work began to lean first towards dramatic expressionism and then towards a simplified painting based on the imaginative and poetic recreation of reality. Within this lyrical, ironic and somewhat erotic world, he developed a body of work whose roots conceal a deep admiration for Picasso and Chagall. Ripollés is represented in the IVAM, the MOMA in New York, the Museum of the University of Alicante, the Museum of Fine Arts in Seville and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Barcelona.