The artist from Extremadura González Bravo, talks about his works as "unsolved equations, pieces that share an intimate and symbolic language where colour is the main element". His paintings, full of feelings and mysticism, introduce the viewer to the artist's particular universe, and in turn, to a deeply reflexive reality with space and time as crucial factors.

Justo González Bravo (Badajoz, 1944), has lived and worked in Lisbon since the 1970s. Although Gonzalez Bravo's life has always been linked to art, specifically painting, his exhibition career began in 1980. However, since that date, he has actively participated in exhibitions in galleries, fairs and national and international cultural centres (Portugal, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, USA, Canada...). His art works can be found in important public and institutional collections such as the MEIAC in Extremadura, The Commercial Bank of Portugal, The Fundação D. Luís Cascais in Portugal and the A.I.T Collection in Madrid, among others.

Gonzalez Bravo

Sem título, 2018

Oil on paper

103 x 153cm

Gonzalez Bravo

Sem título, 2018

Oil on paper

103 x 53cm

The colour in his paintings, is in the line of the Informalism painters that emerged after the Second World War. When he reaches complete abstraction, the colour becomes the vehicle of the work’s mystical essence, getting closer to the paintings of Mark Rothko, Antoni Tàpies, Antonio Saura or Manolo Millares. In his art works we can distinguish elements typical of Expressionism, mainly in his figures and landscapes, which gradually lead to absolute abstraction.

Colour, shapes and texture give a singular identity to the work of González Bravo. To these elements, time and space are added, components with which the artist creates cyclical processes. The author knows perfectly the landscape of Extremadura, its proximities and zones bordering the Portuguese Alentejo, "an austere, dry landscape, but of an immeasurable depth", emphasises the artist. And this is how these landscapes are portrayed in his works, through colour and gesture.

Gonzalez Bravo

Sin Título, 2010

Oil on board

180 x 150cm

Self-reflection is a constant in his work. With an imaginary canvas and brush he creates poetic instants that flow in space, but the self-reflection of this artist goes beyond that, and stops on the issue of the pigment itself, the colour and its shape, making each art work unique.

The narrative of González Bravo is built on the playing with pure and complementary colours that cover his large supports, without forgetting his illegible added graphics and the geometric stains of colour, masterfully overlapping the backgrounds. The material in his work takes us inside the sublime part of art, making the viewer to have the same mystical experience as the author during the creative process and final execution of the work. His paintings are full of mystery, which gives them an identity value.

Gonzalez Bravo

Sin Título, 2015

Oil on board

162 x 146cm

The Portuguese gallery São Mamede participates for the second consecutive year in Art Madrid with an exhibition proposal featuring four Portuguese artists: Gil Maia, Nélio Saltão, Susana Chasse and Paulo Neves, the German artist Georg Scheele and the Spanish artists González Bravo (Badajoz) and David Moreno (Barcelona).

The circle as critical device and the marker as contemporary catalyst

POSCA, the Japanese brand of water-based paint markers, has established itself since the 1980s as a central instrument within contemporary artistic practices associated with urban art, illustration, graphic design, and interdisciplinary experimentation. Its opaque, highly pigmented, fast-drying formula—compatible with surfaces as diverse as paper, wood, metal, glass, and textiles—has enabled a technical expansion that extends beyond the traditional studio, engaging public space, objects, and installation practices alike.

In this context, POSCA operates as more than a working tool; it functions as a material infrastructure for contemporary creation. It is a technical device that enables immediacy of gesture without sacrificing chromatic density or formal precision. Its versatility has contributed to the democratization of languages historically associated with painting, fostering a more horizontal circulation between professional and amateur practices.

This expanded dimension of the medium finds a particularly compelling conceptual framework in The Rolling Collection, a traveling exhibition curated by ADDA Gallery. The project proposes a collective investigation of the circular format, understood not merely as a formal container but as a symbolic structure and a field of spatial tension.

Historically, the circle has operated as a figure of totality, continuity, and return. Within the framework of The Rolling Collection, the circular format shifts away from its classical symbolic charge toward an experimental dimension, becoming a support that challenges the hegemonic rectangular frontality of the Western pictorial tradition. The absence of angles demands a reconsideration of composition, balance, and directional flow.

Rather than functioning as a simple formal constraint, this condition generates a specific economy of visual decisions. The curved edge intensifies the relationship between center and periphery, dissolves internal hierarchies, and activates both centrifugal and centripetal dynamics. The resulting body of work interrogates the very processes through which images are constructed.

Following its 2025 tour through Barcelona, Ibiza, Paris, London, and Tokyo, a selection of the exhibition is presented at Art Madrid, reinforcing its international scope and its adaptability to diverse cultural contexts. The proposal for Art Madrid’26 brings together artists whose practices unfold at the intersection of urban art, contemporary illustration, and hybrid methodologies: Honet, Yu Maeda, Nicolas Villamizar, Fafi, Yoshi, and Cachetejack.

While their visual languages vary—ranging from graphic and narrative approaches to chromatic explorations charged with gestural intensity—the curatorial framework establishes a shared axis: a free, experimental, and distinctly color-driven attitude. In this sense, color functions as a conceptual structure that articulates the works while simultaneously connecting them to the specific materiality of POSCA.

The marker’s inherent chromatic vibrancy engages in dialogue with the formal assertiveness of the circle, generating surfaces in which saturation and contrast take center stage. The tool thus becomes embedded within the exhibition discourse, operating as a coherent extension of the participating artists’ aesthetic vocabularies.

One of the project’s most significant dimensions is the active incorporation of the public. Within the exhibition space—activated by POSCA during Art Madrid’26—visitors will be invited to intervene on circular supports installed on the wall using POSCA markers, thereby symbolically integrating themselves into The Rolling Collection during its presentation in Madrid.

This strategy introduces a relational dimension that destabilizes the notion of the closed artwork. Authorship becomes decentralized, and the exhibition space transforms into a dynamic surface for the accumulation of gestures. From a theoretical standpoint, the project may be understood as aligning with participatory practices that, without compromising formal coherence, open the artistic dispositif to contingency and multiplicity.

The selection of POSCA as the instrument for this collective intervention is deliberate. Its ease of use, line control, and compatibility with multiple surfaces ensure an accessible experience without diminishing the visual potency of the outcome. In this way, the marker operates as a mediator between professional practice and spontaneous experimentation, dissolving technical hierarchies.

The title itself, The Rolling Collection, suggests a collection in motion—unfixed to a single space or definitive configuration. Its itinerant nature, combined with the incorporation of local interventions, transforms the project into an organism in continuous evolution. Within this framework, POSCA positions itself as a material catalyst for a transnational creative community. Long associated with urban scenes and emerging practices, the brand reinforces its identity as an ally of open, experimental, and collaborative processes.

POSCA x The Rolling Collection should not be understood merely as a collaboration between a company and a curatorial initiative; rather, it constitutes a strategic convergence of tool, discourse, and community. The project proposes a reflection on format, the global circulation of contemporary art, and the expansion of authorship, while POSCA provides the technical infrastructure that makes both individual works and collective experience possible.