Artist of the day

Friday, February 20, 2026

Artist of the Day, February 20, 2026 : Vicente Rojo, a Spanish-Mexican painter, graphic designer, and sculptor (#2485)

Vicente Rojo Almazán (1932 – 2021) was a Spanish-Mexican painter, graphic designer, and sculptor exiled and nationalized Mexican. It stands out both for the pictorial work, and for the graphic that it manages in all its possibilities. His work is located within the group of Mexican opticians. Born in Barcelona in 1932, he studied sculpture at the Elementary School of Work. In 1949 he arrived in Mexico and began studies at the School of Painting and Sculpture of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA) and in the workshop of A. Souto, combining his artistic vocation with editorial work. Throughout his life he founded and directed several magazines: Artes, Mexico in Culture, La Cultura in Mexico. His name has achieved great fame in graphic design for Plural, Visual Arts and Visual Discs magazines. On any support and technique the work of Rojo has an undoubted interest, but in the graphic specialty it is a virtuous in all its domains: etchings, aquatints, lithographs, silkscreens and collages. Painting and graphic work run in parallel, being nonetheless the same. It evolves from an expressionist option to the geometrism of circles, squares, hexagons with a frontal view. As a painter, his series must be highlighted: Signs, Denials and Mexico in the rain.

This great artist has contributed to Mexican culture as a plastic artist, painter, sculptor, graphic designer and cultural promoter. In 1960, he was co-founder of Editorial Era, of which he still remains a member of the editorial board and artistic director. He has also collaborated in the foundation of publishers, cultural supplements and other publications.

He influenced in a very important way by collaborating in the office of editions of the National Institute of Fine Arts, the Revista de la Universidad de México and the supplement La Cultura en México of the Revista Siempre.

Rojo belongs to the group of artists called a break, who broke with the tradition of the great muralists (Siqueiros, Orozco and Rivera), was a very important figure for the development of the aesthetic arts of the country, participating in the circles and although he considers that it is rather of continuity; renewer of form and color, he makes variants of the same theme and achieves that all his work is the same as different; as an editor he contributed to the quality of the Mexican industry

Vicente Rojo explains his passion for contributing to Mexico since he arrived in 1949. "When I arrived in Mexico, what dazzled me the most was its light, its sun and its air of freedom, I was just 17 years old when I arrived and I was dragging all the darkness and cruelty that a civil war embodies, so from the first moment I stepped on Mexico I fell in love and continues to do so until now."

© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Vicente Rojo or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

Vicente Rojo

Composiciones, c.1960-70s

Composiciones #2, c.1960-70s

Hacia arriba, 1965

Señal No.1, 1966

Señal sobre fondo violeta, 1967

Vieja señal Nº. 2, 1967

Untitled, 1968

Negación Nº. 9, 1972

Primera prueba impresión verde, 1974

Rehílete, 1978

Funeral Mal III. Acordie, 1979

Lluvia Nº. 13, 1987

Máscara Nº. 1, 1988

Lluvia de papel II, 1989

Codice, 1991

Escenario III, 1992

Invierno, 2000

Jardin secreto J9, 2000

Mediterráneo, 2000

Serie Volcanes completa, 2000

Verano, 2000

Suite Clouds of Fire I, 2006

Cuaderno abierto, 2006

Suite Clouds of Fire III, 2006

Suite Clouds of Fire V, 2006

Aphorism, 2009

ABCDARIO, 2015

Sin título, 2020

Sin título

Thursday, February 19, 2026

Artist of the Day, February 19, 2026 : Sean Scully RA, an Irish-born American painter, printmaker, sculptor and photographer (#2484)

Sean Scully RA (1945) is an Irish-born American-based artist working as a painter, printmaker, sculptor and photographer. His work is held in museum collections worldwide and he has twice been named a Turner Prize nominee. Moving from London to New York in 1975, Scully helped lead the transition from Minimalism to Emotional abstraction in painting, abandoning the reduced vocabulary of Minimalism in favour of a return to metaphor and spirituality in art.

Sean Scully has also been a lecturer and professor at a number of universities and his writing and teachings are collected in the 2016 book Inner: The Collected Writings and Selected Interviews of Sean Scully.

Sean Scully was born in Dublin and raised in South London. Wanting to be an artist from an early age, Scully attended evening classes at the Central School of Art in London from 1962 to 1965, and enrolled full time at Croydon College of Art, London from 1965 until 1968. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Newcastle University in 1972. He was awarded the Frank Knox Fellowship to Harvard University in 1972, where he visited the United States for the first time. In 1975, he moved to New York full-time. Today, he lives and works between New York and London. With a career that spans more than five decades, he has received numerous accolades and has been the subject of multiple touring exhibitions. In 2014, he became the first Western artist to have a career-length retrospective in China. Follow the Heart: The Art of Sean Scully 1964 – 2014 included over 100 paintings and travelled from Shanghai to Beijing. Scully was named a member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2013 and has received honorary degrees from institutions such as the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston; the National University of Ireland, Dublin; Universitas Miguel Hernandez, Valencia; Burren College of Art, National University of Ireland; Newcastle University, UK, among others. A series of essays and conversations between Scully and the esteemed art critic Arthur Danto was published by Hatje Cantz in 2014, and a collection of Scully’s own writing, selected speeches and interviews, Inner, was released in 2016.

Sean Scully's work has shifted the paradigm in American abstraction from Minimalism and its reduced vocabulary towards an emotional form of abstraction, returning to the metaphor and spirituality found in the European painting tradition. While known primarily for his large-scale abstract paintings, comprised of vertical and horizontal bands, tessellating blocks and geometrical forms comprised of gradated and shifting colours, Scully also works in a variety of diverse media, including printmaking, sculpture, watercolour and pastel. Having developed a style over the past five decades that is uniquely his own, Scully has cemented his place in the history of painting. His work synthesises a thoroughly international collection of influences and personal perspectives – ranging from the legacy of American abstraction, with inspiration from the likes of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, and that of European tradition, with nods to Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian, as well as references to classical Greek architecture. While monumental in scale and gesture, Scully’s work retains an undeniable delicacy and sincerity of emotion.
© 2026. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Sean Scully or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only