Antonio Velfin was born in Murcia, Spain, in 1970. Upon graduating from high school he moved to Valencia where he matriculated at the prestigious University of San Carlos receiving his degree in art. Velfin has been a professional artist ever since.
At the beginning of his career, Velfin’s imagery was exclusively classical — following Velazquez and Sorolla – beautiful and luminous scenes of children playing at the beach. Eventually, he added abstraction to his work.
Because Velfin is a master of the human figure in the above classical sense, this allows him to engage in a form of “abstract-realism,” a term he uses to describe two important aesthetic points. First, the colors, shapes and material must flow freely without following any pre-determined style. Second, any image that in itself has a form in reality (for example, animals, landscapes, human beings, objects) is used as if it were a simple color or shapeless stain. The stain will be allowed to wander along the painting until it reaches an “adequate” place in the composition, such as when a brushstroke finds it ideal spot on the canvas. This is how simple abstract images appear as abstract-realism – when they are united with elements in the painting from the real world. He calls this style “New Figurativism”: the use of classical representation over colorful and abstract backgrounds.
His work is widely held in many private collections as he has participated in a great number of international art exhibitions.
