Pilar Pequeño’s photography invites us to know a serene part of nature that becomes majestic and suggestive to the warm light of this work. The expert look of the author, masterful in composition, works her spell by finding the ideal light atmosphere for each flower, leaf or fruit that she catches in her images. A fair balance that reminds us of classical painting, with rounded edges and soft sheen in which the simplest and humblest beauty of our immediate environment condenses.

Today we are lucky to meet this exceptional photographer in person and talk in detail about her work and the evolution of her photographic technique. Join us to meet her.

Congratulations because we know that you have just opened the exhibition in the Villanueva building of the Prado Museum, I suppose you receive this news with joy, as a professional challenge.

When they called me from the Foundation of Friends of the Prado Museum to invite me to participate in the project, logically I was very happy because it is wonderful to be in this institution. The project was about being inspired by an author or a painting related to the museum. I had already done, within the series of still lifes, some works for a commemorative exhibition of Don Quixote in 2015. When they told me to participate I thought it would be interesting to continue with the development of the still lifes and the influence of the painters in the Prado, both of still lifes and of vases, because I am very interested in transparencies, glass, light... The works I have now exhibited in the Prado are inspired by Zurbarán and Arellano.

It's a project that has taken much longer than it seems

Synthesising the beauty of Zurbarán in two paintings, what inspires his work has been hard...

This proposal is a challenge for the artist but also comes as a recognition of his career. This project is the photographic result of a whole career where the beginnings were not always in the world of photography, as far as we know.

I started drawing, and for a while, I combined photography and drawing. But then, as what interests me most is light, there is nothing like the photographic technique. Photography is like drawing with light. It's what I like most about this technique, how it transmits light. To make still lifes I use natural and window light, like the classics, but I direct it, that is, the advantage of still life is that you can create your own lighting scene. If you are going to do a landscape, you have to wait for the right light to happen and here, you just decide what you want to do. I like to do the work and get the negative as pure as possible.

Pilar Pequeño

Serie: Huellas, Baixo Miño. Ventana II, 2012

Giclèe. Pigmentos minerales sobre papel (Con passe partou: 50 x 60 cm)

28 x 31cm

Pilar Pequeño

Serie: Huellas, Baixo Miño. Ventana I, 2012

Giclèe. Pigmentos minerales sobre papel (Con passe partou: 50 x 60 cm)

28 x 31cm

The best thing for me is to search. For example, when I go out to the field, I look for wildflowers and I think "how beautiful is this stem, how will it look if I put a backlight?" or "these leaves are transparent, I will put them in the backlight" and then, when I arrive, I study the still life in the studio, or I submerge it in water, and from there, I work the light scene. In order to transmit the feeling produced by an image, you have to pay careful attention of the composition, to place lines, plans... there should be something that always forces you to take a second look. Although it seems a very simple task, this process of making the image is very thoughtful, very worked, and what most excites me is light. The whole series of still lifes revolves around transparencies. Water, which is an element that already appeared in my first landscapes of the 80s, is now in the vases, in the glasses. Sometimes I get a distance away, and the glass, the plant, the surfaces that surround it come out, what I want to extract is the effect of the light on the glass, on the water, on the plant but also on the elements which are around them. And other times what I do is to get so close to the vase, that the limits are not seen, and then it is submerged in the water, and sometimes the surface is not seen. I want to believe that my photos are suggestive, not just images in which all the meaning is revealed, in such a way that the person who comes to see those photos can interpret them according to what he/she is feeling at that moment. I think that the spectator can project on them looking for the meaning.

Pilar Pequeño working in her studio. Via santamaca.com

In all this laborious work where there is a pre-work approach, we also perceive a whole subject that underlies and invites us to reflect on the passage of time, on our relationship with the environment. The titles you choose for your projects are also quite suggestive in that regard

Nature is present from my first landscapes to my last book that belongs to the series Huellas (traces). Here I work on abandoned places, with what we can see through the gaps in the doors and windows. And what interested me in this series is the development of nature in places that man has abandoned. How ruin changes if it is in the north, in Galicia, or is in the Mediterranean. Light changes, the history of the building changes, the architecture... For example, the house that I have in the Mar Menor is open to the outside and from inside, through its windows, the sea looks like a canvas, the rushes, the trees... On the other hand, in the north, in Galicia, it is the tangled garden that enters the corridors. There is a very interesting concept of the anthropologist Marc Augé about time in a ruin. He says that ruin does not represent a past but multiple accumulated presents, that united by the action of nature demonstrate a different time. That's what I feel.

Is there something that you find particularly difficult in your work or something that poses a challenge for you?

I really enjoy working. The project of the Friends of the Prado Museum Foundation has been hard work because I wanted to synthesise so much what I feel that I was sometimes lost. But that work is very nice, that is, in the end, you get more or less what you wanted and you stay very satisfied. That's why I want to show all the previous work I've done because I've taken several paths. For example, there is the Flemish still life and the Spanish still life, the Prado has a fantastic collection of Flemish still life, where the colours change, the form... I have tried to do a little bit of everything; sometimes I have mixed, so I think it is also interesting to show this process.

Pilar Pequeño

Bodegón con granadas y plato de estaño, 2010

Giclèe. Pigmentos minerales sobre papel (Con passe partou: 40 x 50 cm)

18 x 26cm

Pilar Pequeño

Magnolia, 2011

Giclèe. Pigmentos minerales sobre papel (Con passe partou: 40 x 50 cm)

18 x 24cm

Pilar Pequeño

Populus nigra. Hojas II, 2010

Giclée. Pigmentos minerales sobre papel (Con passe partou: 64 x 79 cm)

40 x 56cm

Are you open to what the chance puts you ahead?

It's not chance, it's pure work. Right now I'm working with the cubist perspective, in which you can access at the same time from the front and from the back. For example, I have a photo that is completely submerged and what I do, is taking the picture from above the water and at the same time, I also take the front part of the vase, and then on the surface it reflects, not only the plant, but also the leaves that are in the bottom and come out like green shadows, as if it were a painting of Monet.

Is there any milestone, something that has represented a change for you?

I work because I like it, and I enjoy doing it, but if there is any recognition like the Gold Medal for the merit of the Fine Arts, it’s a good thing because there are many people who make very good photos, but this time it was my turn. It is very difficult that among so many photographers, the Foundation of Friends of the Prado Museum has called me to participate in this exhibition. Seeing your work recognised, makes you very happy. The other day, at the opening, I saw my photos hanging and a couple of steps away, in the next room, all the great masters, it’s very exciting. Then, also, when someone approaches you and tells you that a picture of you has moved him and transmits that emotion that you have felt is very beautiful.

Congratulations Pilar, thank you very much for sharing with us a part of you that sometimes is not so visible because you make yourself known through your work, but it is also important to know who is behind. We thank you very much.

The work of Carmen Baena (Benalúa de Guadix, Granada, 1967) is structured as a poetic investigation into the memory of territory and its material translation into forms, textures, and gestures. Her practice stems from a life experience deeply connected to a specific landscape in southern Spain, understood not only as a geographical space but also as an affective and symbolic sedimentation. In this sense, her pieces can be approached from a perspective centered on direct experience: the landscape not as representation, but as a lived trace that emerges through doing.

Baena activates unique dialogue between historically hierarchical materials. Marble, associated with permanence and monumental tradition, coexists with embroidery, a technique linked to domestic knowledge passed down through generations, historically relegated but here reactivated as a fully-fledged artistic language. This coexistence is not presented as confrontation, but as a field of resonances where the solid and the fragile, the enduring and the tactile, interpenetrate. From a perspective attentive to connections, embodied experience, and knowledge constructed from everyday life, thread becomes a tool for sensitive knowledge.

Color, particularly in her textile works, functions as vibrational energy rather than a purely formal attribute. In contrast to the chromatic restraint of marble, embroidery introduces an open temporality in which intuitive gestures and accidents acquire structural value. Thus, the process becomes a space for listening, where the unexpected does not interrupt the work but rather constitutes it. In Carmen Baena’s practice, creating means allowing the territory—both external and internal—to continue transforming itself.

The Garden Blooms X. 2025. Acrylic and embroidery thread on canvas. 50 x 70 cm.

Your works evoke landscapes, reliefs, and topographies. How does the relationship between physical territory and symbolic or emotional territory articulate itself in your practice?

The physical territory where I was born and spent my early childhood has shaped all my work. I was born in a cave in the Guadix region (Granada), home to the largest complex of troglodyte dwellings in Europe.

The landscape there is full of contrasts: alongside the greens of the vega—fruit trees and poplars—you find the reddish ochres of the eroded hills. And facing the white of Sierra Nevada, the white of snow that still lingers in spring, there are also the greens of the wheat fields and cereal plains. Thanks to erosion and the geological layers that have been exposed over time, the area contains a series of strata that preserve extremely important continental geological records.

For this reason, the area has been designated a UNESCO Global Geopark. I spent a happy, very simple childhood in this environment—living closely connected to nature—and that is the territory that surfaces throughout the symbolism of my work.

Circular Horizons XIV. 2023. Acrylic and embroidery thread on canvas. 72 x 72 cm.

You learned embroidery in a family context, and you draw on the landscapes of your childhood. When did you realise that your immediate world—people, gestures, everyday landscapes—was no longer just a memory, but an active driving force in the construction of your artistic language?

I realised that the universe of my childhood was an active driving force in the construction of my artistic language thanks to a friend, after she visited my cave-house. Through her perspective, she made me aware of what I had been doing intuitively up until that point. This happened more than twenty years ago, and since then—even though I’m aware of it—I continue working.

I like working intuitively, and most of the time I only discover what the landscape has been afterwards. What stays with me is the sensation that inspired the piece once I have finished it.

Sea Breeze III. 2025. Acrylic and embroidery thread on canvas. 60 x 80 cm.

Marble carries historical and symbolic weight linked to monumentality, while embroidery is often associated with traditions that have been overlooked or confined to the domestic sphere. How do you negotiate this clash of cultural status in your work?

For years, marble was the material I was most interested in, and the one I used for most of my sculptural work. It wasn’t until 2007–2008 that I felt the need to incorporate embroidery—a technique I had learned as a teenager.

I began experimenting on paper, using stitching to draw landscapes and trees directly connected to the sculptures I was making at the time, and also working on small scraps of different kinds of paper. I explored the technical and visual possibilities of thread, creating small works in which colour, texture, and the thread’s vibration became the protagonists.

Later, I moved on to larger formats on canvas, where I also incorporated acrylic. These two seemingly contradictory practices—marble and embroidery—have coexisted in my studio and my work without any difficulty. Today, embroidery has completely displaced marble.

Between Heaven and Earth III. 2020. Marble and wood. 25 x 14 x 14 cm.

In your marble pieces, white and gold create an almost meditative atmosphere; in contrast, embroidery and acrylic burst into colour, activating gesture and vibration. Is this a conscious choice, or do the materials reveal their own possible colour to you?

With marble, the choice of white and gold is a conscious decision: I want to convey the spiritual atmosphere of the landscape, and the relationship between human beings and nature. By contrast, the explosion of colour in the thread emerged gradually and more intuitively, and only later did I begin to understand and use the possibilities of this material in a more conscious way.

Whisper Between the Lines XIII. 2023. Acrylic and embroidery thread on canvas. 40 x 60 cm.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

When it comes to making my work, I don’t like to plan too much. With embroidered pieces, I do tests on small scraps of paper—trying out colour and the stitch I’m going to use—and with that I try to visualise the final result in my mind. This way of working leaves plenty of space for things to happen while I work. It allows me to discover, learn, and make use of the unexpected.

For example, in some pieces, while embroidering, tangles can occur because the thread tension isn’t right or the thread is too loose. At first, those tangles might seem like they could ruin the piece, but when I see them, I realise they’re visually very interesting. So later I have consciously reproduced that effect in other works.