The Barcelona gallery Pigment Gallery is participating for the first time in Art Madrid with a selection of works ranging from the most modern figuration to the purest abstraction. Pigment participates in the fair with five local artists and one Italian artist based in Barcelona. They are: Aurelio San Pedro, Marta Fàbregas, Adalina Coromines, Rosa Galindo, Rosanna Casano and Alberto Udaeta.

The multidisciplinary artist Aurelio San Pedro (Barcelona, 1983), uses different media and techniques both traditional and digital to express himself. In Art Madrid, Aurelio San Pedro will present works belonging to his series "Libros" which he tells a story about the concept of time by using as signs of his compositions book songs, pages, covers and cut-out words, structuring them within a surface which he achieves the final sculptural piece. In this way, the artist creates his own symbology and artistic imagery.

Each book he uses does not contain just a story, it is full of experiences and memories of the author himself or of the characters in the story told, and in many cases of the artist himself. The artist plays with time, conveying his experiences through fragments of books with variable times, using repetition, gathering and order to symbolize the concept of the archive.

Aurelio San Pedro

Aquellas historias le cambiaron, 2000

Técnica mixta con papel de libro

100 x 100cm

Marta Fàbregas

Colonitzada nº55, 2019

Fotografía antigua, mix media sobre papel de acuarela sobre tela

130 x 100cm

The concept of time is also used in the work of Marta Fàbregas (Barcelona, 1974). In her series "Colonizadas" she rescues photographs of 19th century women from different social and working environments who have been subdued simply because they are women. All of them, in one way or another, were colonised by society, which took away their identity, their future, their desires and their dreams. Marta Fàbregas gives visibility to women who never had it.

Fàbregas uses photography as the basis of her work, but she alters it through the technique of transphotography by combining photographs from digital archives with precious fabrics, using collage techniques, inks, gums, which she manages to create textured surfaces. These fabrics are attached to the image by means of digital retouching, complemented by collages and transphotography.

Adalina Coromines

Grècia, 2019

Mixed media

183 x 153cm

Adalina Coromines (Barcelona, 1963) by means of different techniques in which natural pigments, earth, sand and ecological materials in general are found, creates a suggestive work, where the sensation of the passage of time is transmitted by the appearance of the piece already aged, being the textures and the patinas the elements that contribute those effects of illusory wear that the artist manages to transmit, and that coexist in her inner world. The big formats of her works help the viewer to enter into the deepest mysticism of the artist.

Coromines intervenes the materials used in her art work, texturing them with different tools, some of them coming from her own inventiveness, and she manages to create bas-reliefs that give depth to his work, in which large horizontal wooden boards are superimposed on metal ones. A beauty achieved through modesty and simplicity.

Rosa Galindo

lagon 3, 2019

Tecnica mixta sobre plexigas

150 x 150cm

The dream images of the artist Rosa Galindo (Barcelona, 1962) transport us to an imaginary territory of delicate organic forms that she achieves by playing with different research processes, mainly with the technique of reverse Plexiglas painting. This plastic material allows to obtain transparencies and opacities in which the color vibrates of a special form in its gestural brushstrokes, managing with it to create a fictitious atmosphere where it manifests his philosophy on the place of the world in which the humanity must be located.

His works lead us to a world of meditation and personal reflection through the weightless sensation that the organic forms superimposed on his colorful backgrounds arouse.

Rosanna Casano

Atrio, 2019

Oil on paper

47 x 46cm

Rosanna Casano (Marsala, Italy, 1968), settled in 1989 in Barcelona, the city where she forged her artistic career. In Casano's work geometric forms, symmetry and patterns predominate, some of her pieces remind us of architectural structures ordered with simple forms, others start from more organic forms that tend to be figurative.

“In my work, different ways of composing coexist that are complementary. There is a tendency to order by means of construction and form, structuring a space, geometry creates a place where I think I am what I feel. And there is a tendency to leave the matter that I express, open or uniform, organic or mineral matter, where perhaps I think I feel what I am.”

Alberto Udaeta

Yunque de la memoria, 2014

Grey iron

15 x 31cm

Alberto Udaeta

Anvil of water 722, 2014

Grey iron

18 x 50.5cm

The wrought iron sculptures by Alberto Udaeta (Barcelona, 1947) are based on experience and history. Using traditional techniques, some of which are typical of craftsmanship, the artist creates delicate structures based on assembled geometric elements that fit together. Udaeta seeks the splendour of forms through matter.

The artist condenses in his trajectory his formation and experience as an industrial engineer and his more profound investigation in the field of iron sculpture, experimenting with cast iron in the workshop he set up in Barcelona in 1982 in a former cork factory. ”The metals, fumes and gases that clutter workshops and foundries have partially spoiled my sense of smell, which is why I remember with nostalgia the smells I perceived as a child, when I returned to my great-grandmother's farm in the car. Fabulous smells of earth, water, freshly mown grass and also of horses, stones and snakes. But above them all there is still the bright, sharp, metallic smell of the edge of the dalle, very similar to that of my iron sculptures".

The work of Iyán Castaño (Oviedo, 1996) is situated within a genealogy of contemporary art that interrogates the tension between the ephemeral and the permanent, placing artistic practice on a threshold where nature, time, and perception converge. His research begins with an apparently minor geomorphological phenomenon—the traces left in the sand by the action of the tides—and transforms it into a poetic device for sensitive observation of the landscape. The temporal restriction imposed by low tide functions not only as a technical constraint but also as a conceptual structure that organizes the creative process and aligns it with an ethic of radical attention and presence.

Far from approaching the landscape as a mere backdrop or stage, Castaño recognizes in the maritime environment a generative system that precedes all human intervention. The sea, wind, and light produce autonomous records that he translates pictorially, shifting authorship toward a practice of listening and mediation.

The territory—initially asturian and progressively extended to other geographical contexts—functions as a material archive and situated memory. Each work becomes an unrepeatable index of a specific place and moment, revealing the fragility of natural cycles without resorting to explicit rhetoric of denunciation. In this way, Iyán Castaño’s painting operates as an active pause, a gesture of suspension that allows us to experience the world’s constant transformation from a sensitive and reflective proximity.

Open waters. 14-04-24. Expanded graphic on canvas. 2024. Detail.

In your practice, you work under the time constraint imposed by low tide. How does this temporal limit shape your creative process?

Low tide profoundly conditions my working method, but it does not function merely as a time limit; rather, it is the axis around which the entire project is structured. There is a prior phase in which I study meteorological conditions and the possible climatic variations of a specific day; based on this, I know whether I will be able to work and with which materials.

Once on the beach, during low tide, I have a very limited window—sometimes barely two hours or even less—in which I must move through the space searching for existing traces. If I find one, I intervene in it; if not, I must move on to another beach. After the intervention, I have to remove it quickly before the sea returns and erases every trace. In a way, these works transform the ripples of sand—those forms that are essentially ephemeral—into something permanent.

Where the sea is born. 15-09-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 40 x 60 cm. Rodiles Beach, Asturias. 2025.

How does the meteorological and maritime environment—the unpredictability of the sea, wind, light, and tide—become a co-author of your pieces?

I do not consider the environment a co-author in the traditional sense, but rather the true author of the traces I work with. I am interested in understanding nature as a great creator: through tides, waves, wind, and light, the sand generates forms that are in constant regeneration. In order to create my works, the sea must first have created its own.

From there, using acrylics, oils, waxes, or sprays, I attempt to translate into the work my sensations and emotions in front of the sea at that specific moment. Whether it is winter or summer, cloudy or sunny, a small cove or an expansive beach, all of these context conditions result and become imprinted in the work.

Sand Ripples. 07-04-21. Expanded graphic on canvas. 189 x 140 cm. Niembro Estuary. Asturias. 2021.

Your work is closely tied to the Asturian territory—beaches, coastal forests, the cove of La Cóndia. What role do place, topography, local identity, and geographic memory play in your practice?

Place is everything in my project. Asturias was the point of departure and the territory where my gaze was formed. I have been working along this line for seven years, and over time I have come to understand that each trace is inseparable from the specific site and the exact day on which it is produced.

From there, I felt the need to expand the map and begin working in other territories. So far, I have developed works in Senegal, Ecuador, the Galápagos Islands, Indonesia, and elsewhere—and in each case, the result is completely different. The sea that bathes those coasts, the arrangement of the rocks, the morphology of the beach, or even the animals that inhabit it generate unique traces, impossible to reproduce elsewhere. This specificity of territory—its topography and geographic memory—is inscribed in each work in a singular, inseparable, and unrepeatable way.

Mangata. 05-11-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 190 x 130 cm. Sorraos Beach. Llanes. 2025.

To what extent are climate change, rising sea levels, altered tidal cycles, or coastal erosion present—or potentially present—as an underlying reflection in your work?

My work does not originate from an ecological intention or a direct form of protest. If there is a reflection on the environment, it emerges indirectly, by bringing people closer to the landscape, inviting them to observe attentively and to develop a more empathetic relationship with the environment they inhabit. Beaches are in constant transformation, but I do not seek to fix the landscape; rather, I attempt to convey the experience of being in front of it. In this sense, each work is like a small sea that one can take home.

Tree of Life. 19-02-25. Expanded graphic on canvas. 50 x 70 cm. El Puntal Beach. Asturias. 2025.

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

In my work there is very little planning in terms of the final result, but there is a very precise preliminary planning. Before going to the beach, I monitor the time of low tide, wave height, wind, and weather conditions; based on this, I decide which beach to go to. Even so, when I arrive, I still do not know what work I am going to make. It is there that I determine which material to use, which color to apply, and where the intervention will take place. Many times, the environment simply does not allow work on that day, and chance becomes an essential element of these works. Error, in turn, becomes a new possibility if one learns how to work with it.