Raúl Galán Hurtado Spanish, b. 1998

Spanish painter Raúl Galán Hurtado explores painting as an open-ended process that investigates the limitations of the canvas while exploring the relationship between the canvas and the artist himself. Hurtado questions these limitations through material, technique, and the integrity of the canvas body. In doing so, his work tests the boundaries of painting; layering with thick impasto, letting pigment seep through from the application of paint on the back to the front, and allowing parts to remain raw and untouched—the canvas yearns for more, and begs to be left alone.

Each painting unfolds through an ongoing back and forth between sketches and notes derived from written narratives of the artist’s lived experience and their translation onto the canvas. Themes of walking, literature, and pleasure recur in these narratives and seem to result in a distinct motion and subsequent emotional reaction on the canvas body. Already, a relationship is apparent, both psychologically and physically, through gesture, material, and the shaped image.

Bodily appendages are littered throughout the compositions—an arm, or a foot, breaking through the commotion of abstract forms. In the paintings, the constant dissolution between the abstract landscape and figuration points to the body as a filter between the pictorial act and the artist himself. At this conjunction, a catharsis occurs: a realization that the two can never exist without the existence of the other.

Hurtado graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Castilla–La Mancha (2023). During his studies, he completed an exchange program at the University of Barcelona (2023). Selected exhibitions include: diego, a two-person exhibition at Belly Button, Valencia (2026); I Won’t Move So I Don’t Wake You Up, Pablo’s Birthday, New York (2026); Un salto verdaderamente gimnástico, a solo exhibition at Casa Antillón, Madrid (2024); 307 persones en 558 m³, La Model (C/ Entença 155), curated by Eixjove, Barcelona (2023); Me tropiezo con un objeto y me mancho: Apreciaciones sobre el proceso pictórico, a solo exhibition in Cuenca (2023); Sin título, Aula Miró, Faculty of Fine Arts, Barcelona (2023); and Cubículo, C/ Alcalá 94, Madrid (2022). In 2022, he was an artist-in-residence at Residencias Artísticas Reinosa, Cantabria. In 2026, he has been shortlisted for the VML The Cocktail Award, presented annually in recognition of artistic achievement.