JOSE MANUEL CAJAL
Spanish, b. 1978
Jose Manuel Cajal Lopez, is a hyperrealist painter with a focus on landscape and cityscape imagery. Cajal studied painting at La Facultad de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia from 1999 to 2004.
Born and based in Madrid, Cajal has a romantic eye and a mastery of color technique, despite his colorblindness. Like many artists, Cajal became interested in art during childhood. He began with pencil drawings, as colors could pose a challenge. Today, he overcomes this with color tests, temperature tests, and known color ratio mixing techniques.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Cajal’s work is the sense of intimacy. Though the subjects are often cityscapes, Cajal has an immense sense of beauty, and finds it through subtleties — shadows, light, setting, the reflections of raindrops, or something intangible and uniquely experienced. His works are carefully composed to “transmit beauty from an intimate viewpoint”.