About the Artist: Ricardo Jarama

Ricardo Jarama (Lima, 1974) is a Peruvian artist who has been living and working in Athens since 2007. He was trained at the Escuela Nacional Superior Autonoma de Bellas Artes del Peru, where he specialised in sculpture and drawing. In addition, he completed a teacher training programme. After his studies, he became a professor at the Escuela Nacional in Lima and in Jauja, where a branch of the academy is located.

In Peru, Jarama mainly made sculptures. He used different types of stone, in combination with metal and wood. The works are predominantly abstract, but some titles, such as Egg, suggest that they sometimes deal with an abstracted reality. His sculptures have been purchased by collectors and museums. He has also donated a number of large sculptures to important cultural institutions in Lima.

Jarama’s life changed drastically in 2005, when he met his current Greek wife, who was travelling through Peru with her sister. In 2007, when it turned out she was pregnant, they decided to move to Athens. Jarama had never been outside Peru before, and, as a result, life in Athens was an enormous culture shock. He didn’t speak the language and he experienced discrimination due to his skin colour. The contemporary art he saw in galleries and museums in Greece didn’t interest him. In Athens, they moved to a small apartment that had no studio space. Thanks to a friend of Jarama’s wife, they were able to live in the house of her grandfather, the well-known artist Aristomenis Angelopoulos, for a long period. There was not only a studio available, but also a huge library with art books, mainly about European and North American art. For him, this library was a blessing and a voyage of discovery. He learned to appreciate the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin and Egon Schiele. His world was opened up, and an unceasing production of mainly figurative drawings and paintings began. His vision of the developments in the Peruvian and other South American societies crystallised because he was literally able to visualise from a distance. Out of this, several series developed from 2008 onwards. Currently, Jarama is living in Athens with his family. By now, he has made several series of paintings and drawings that merge into each other in terms of content and style, and which continue to develop: Naturama, Koko, Habitante - Capital del Reino Olvidado, Futuro and recently La Super Realidad.

A special aspect of Jarama’s working method is that he completes the final versions of his drawings and paintings in his sketchbooks. According to the artist, everything starts with drawing for him. Due to restlessness and his quest for a language to visualise his vision, the ‘handwriting’ of drawing is necessary to achieve the results he wishes. These are not sketches, but completed drawings and watercolours. He transfers some of them onto canvas or panel in acrylic paint, or onto a larger-sized piece of paper in mixed media. The sketchbooks are treasure troves from which one masterpiece after the other emerges. He invents characters and uses South American as well as Japanese metaphors. In bright colours, he translates his vision of current and urgent issues into fascinating artworks. For Jarama, colour equals life. He considers humans to be the puppets of the political, economic and religious system. According to him, humans are too small in spirit and body to reach a balanced existence. In the series Naturama, Futuro and Super Realidad, he not only depicts his vision and experiences, but also tries to make a positive impact on the narrow-mindedness of humans, by integrating nature and animals as metaphors in his works. The series Koko is more autobiographical, but at the same time universal. This will be explored in more detail in the text accompanying the works that belong to this series.