«My intention is never to portray faces, but souls» – Alfonso Silván
Alfonso Silván is a plastic artist born in Madrid, Spain. Specialized in acrylic portrait painting with a very personal and expressive style.
From a very young age he was passionate about drawing and traditional painting, he had the ambitious dream of becoming a world-renowned artist and being remembered in history books. However, although he always knew that art would be a fundamental pillar in his life and that he would train as an artist, for a few years as a teenager it was difficult for him to believe that this could really be his profession.
This caused him to distance himself from the practice over the years, although he never stopped completely. He focused on his studies as an engineer (something he also liked), and he viewed art as a nice hobby.
In 2012 he began his studies as a computer engineer at the Carlos III University of Madrid, however, it did not take him long to realize that he was not on the path he really wanted.
During his second year of studies he had a serious leg injury. Suffering, loneliness, time and too many thoughts were the perfect recipe to delve into his inner world and get to know himself. The time had come to turn your life around and move in the right direction, the path to your happiness.
After recovery, with a clear mind, fixed ideas and a single objective, in 2014 he left his engineering studies and began a degree in Fine Arts at the Rey Juan Carlos University. These years of study recover his passion for traditional painting, discover how beautiful and enriching it is to study what you love and fully live his university years.
However, upon finishing his studies and with a certain lack of confidence in himself and his future as an artist, he looked for a way to find a job that would provide him with economic stability as well as enough time to remain active in painting. He begins a business project with his father to create an insurance brokerage. During the first 3 years, this project consumes practically all of his time and he has to adapt his artistic side. Focusing mainly on digital painting, a medium that he had already practiced a lot and which gave him great speed of creation and learning, making many commissioned portraits at night.
In 2019, after returning from his trip to Kenya, with more time for himself and having regained a lot of confidence in his works, he decided to leave the commissions and focus on a project about his experience in the Maasai Mara. This is really the beginning of his artistic career, finding and developing his own quite recognizable style.
His passion for portraits, the looks and the purest expression of each person, together with his particular way of painting them with a certain realism and a lot of color, make his portraits works full of personality and feelings. It tries to reflect the soul of the person being portrayed and project it to the world.
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