Sebastián Capella Pallarés

Sebastián Capella Pallarés (Spain, 1927 - 2013 ) was a superb contemporary Spanish artist who resided in San Diego, California for over 40 years.  He was born in Valencia, Spain, where he received lengthy and thorough academic training at the Superior School of fine Arts.  There, the traditional course of study and Capella’s remarkable native talent combined to produce what one might call a modern 17th-century master.  His command of classical drawing and of the representational and  coloristic techniques of oil painting in that great period of Spanish art was – and remains – of the highest order.

With his restless and explorative character, however, Capella could not stay content with a manner that, however splendid, ignored several hundred years of the subsequent history of painting.  He expanded his own style of brushwork, palette and treatment of the painting’s surface, its sense of space and light, and its expressive freedom, although never abandoning his commitment to the represented subject.

Throughout these stylistic metamorphoses (which often returned upon themselves to re-explore earlier manners), Capella’s paintings invariably exhibit the artist’s passionate determination to render the visible world in its freshness, its richness, its vitality and its truth.

He is widely known for his splendid portraits, (reminiscent in their verisimilitude and their brilliant technical execution, of the 19th century portraiture) of a great many San Diegans.  But at the same time he has remained very much a European artist, and very much a Spanish artist.  Returning to his native country regularly, he has painted many important members of society, including members of the Spanish royal family.  

(from an article by Jonathan Seville)