Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, March 17, 2022: Okuda San Miguel, a Spanish painter, sculptor, muralist, graffiti artist (#1523)

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Artist of the Day, March 17, 2022: Okuda San Miguel, a Spanish painter, sculptor, muralist, graffiti artist (#1523)

Okuda San Miguel, Óscar San Miguel Erice (1980) is a Spanish painter and sculptor known for his distinctive style of colorful geometric patterns that portray animals, skulls, religious iconography and human figures. He is perhaps most famous for painting the Kaos Temple in Llanera, Asturias, Spain. His murals can be seen on buildings and objects across the world in India, Mali, France, the United States, Japan, Chile, Brazil, Peru, South Africa, Mexico, Canada, Morocco, Ukraine and Spain.

Born Oscar San Miguel Erice in Santander, Spain, Okuda began producing recognizable graffiti along railroad tracks and on abandoned factories in his hometown around 1997. After receiving a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2007, he began to produce works in his studio, which led to shows in New York, Berlin, London and Paris. Around 2009, he also began producing sculpture. In 2011, his sculpture began to exhibit the colorful, frequently triangular geometric patterns for which he became known. His early works focus on birds, stars, naked women, skulls and faces. Many of Okuda's human characters are painted in grayscale.

Okuda received international renown after painting the interior of the church of Santa Barbara in Llanera, Asturias, Spain, in 2015. After a group of donors purchased the church and turned it into a skate park, they agreed with Okuda to paint the interior. Following its debut, the church was renamed the Kaos Temple. In 2015, he also began producing 3D sculpture of animal heads in fiberglass bearing his signature colorful geometric patterns. The following year, Okuda painted another abandoned church with a 360-degree mural in Marrakesh, Morocco, which he titled "11 Mirages to Freedom."

In 2017, Okuda was named among the most recognized contemporary urban artists by Graffiti Art Magazine. His outdoor works appear in Spain, Morocco, Miami, Paris, Edmonton, Vancouver, and Toronto. His tallest outdoor mural is a multi-themed painting on a 23-story student residence in Toronto completed in 2018.

In 2018 he placed Air Land Sea a series of seven sculptures in around the Boston Seaport in Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. It is his largest installed series of work to date.

The work of Okuda San Miguel is predominantly characterized by geometric structures and multicolored prints. These are sometimes associated with gray bodies, and often include headless figures, religious references, symbols, animals and giant heads. Art critics catalog his style as pop surrealism with a clear street influence of urban art, though his style has not been exempt from controversy.

His works focus on contradictions in existentialism, the meaning of life and the false freedom of capitalism, particularly on the conflict between modernity and our human roots.[18] He is interested in pop art, especially in cinema and fashion, as well as in the light and color of other cultures, which allows him to incorporate all these interests to his style. Sometimes he looks for inspiration in great classic works such as the Garden of the Delights of El Bosco or Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. As influences, he cites René Magritte, Max Ernst, Yayoi Kusama, Takashi Murakami, and Hieronymus Bosch.

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