Antonio Villanueva
The radical Spanish painter has spent decades in his beloved Ibiza.
Born in Toledo in 1940, Antonio Villanueva moved to Paris in 1962, determined to swell the ranks of the blue-jean nomads studying painting in the French capital. Villanueva settled in artsy Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he worked as a cartoonist, illustrator and actor, before travelling to the Canary Islands. A meeting with the Spanish sculptor, architect and activist César Manrique led to collaborations on Manrique’s native Lanzarote. Encouraged by the suggestions of his friends, Villanueva travelled to Ibiza for the first time in 1968, finding an island whose gentle people and free-spirited lifestyle appealed to him greatly. Villanueva settled in Santa Eulalia del Río, near to the fabled Sandy’s Bar, then a hub for the louche and liberal artists and thespians of the north, including Terry-Thomas, Denholm Elliott, Ángela Molina and Diana Rigg. Entranced by the luminosity, the vitality and the bohemian freedom of 1970s Ibiza, Villanueva chose to dedicate much of his life to the island and particularly to the community around Santa Eulalia. His work captures the light and energy of an island whose spirit is still defined by the counterculture movement of the mid-20th century.
