For Barcelona-based Montse Valdés, art is all about intuition. It’s not about following a fad and attempting to create something that’s in fashion for all of five minutes – it’s about creating what comes from within: listening to an inner ear and following intuition. Technique can be learnt, but mastery comes from patience, from practice and from instinct.
Valdés studied the technique of oil painting at several academies in Barcelona and later at the École de Beaux Arts in Paris (1985-88). In her relentless search for the right painterly technique, she struck somewhere decidedly in equilibrium: a form that is big, bold, large and freeing, but also tightly composed and high in detail and definition.
How is such a balance struck? At a distance, Valdés’ work appears swollen in large volumes of colour and in bold forms with sweeping gestures, but up close one can see the fine details and small strokes of her palette knife. Such composure brings a sense of ethereal calm to the viewer, who is immediately transfixed but also at peace with the large canvases. There is never too much of any one component within the paintings.
What is immediately and distinctly clear in Valdés’ canvases is how deeply emotional and intimate they are. Within her portraits, she imbues what she describes as the ‘peace of the soul’ of the person depicted. The artist manages to extract the state of the mind of the sitter and place it within her work.
When speaking of her inimitable style, Valdés says: “Let the gaze unravel the essence of the person. Currently, I am working with paint that literally spreads on the canvas and which can be vertical or horizontal – and I thus form other types of textures that I will respect and that will be the painting.”
Valdés is represented by Villa del Arte Galleries, an international space with two galleries in Barcelona, one in Amsterdam, and an entirely online catalogue. Villa del Arte Galleries has a number of Valdés’ many intimate, large-scale canvases available for purchase, which are waiting to be uncovered.
Explore all pieces available at Villa del Arte Galleries here
![Fransisco Goya, ‘Equestrian Portrait of Don Manuel Godoy, Duke of Alcudia’ [detail], 1794, image © Sotheby's via Barnebys price bank](https://images.prismic.io/barnebys/0fdb18dc-71ed-492a-8598-1f54c2050679_Goya+cover.jpg?auto=compress,format)
