Biography

Philip Stanton was born in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. in 1962. At the age of four, he moved with his family to the East Coast of Florida near Cape Kennedy. He graduated with honors from Palm Bay High School in 1980 and enrolled in the University of Central Florida (UCF), in Orlando where he received his Associate of Arts Degree (A.A.). In 1983, after winning a number of scholarships, he enrolled in Rollins College, in Winter Park, Florida where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree (BFA) in 1985.

In 1985 he applied to the Master of Fine Arts Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Along with sixteen other students he was accepted into the program. At the same time he was awarded prizes and scholarships which included: The Fishbach Foundation, Winter Park Community Trust Fund, the Posey Foundation, the Koch Foundation and the Scripps Howard Foundation. In 1987 he graduated with high honors from the MFA Program.

In 1988 he moved to Barcelona, Spain where he formed the design group Stanton Studio S.L. Since 1988 he has participated in more than 40 solo and group shows. He is a professor of illustration, and head of the recently formed postgraduate illustration program at the EINA Art & Design School in Barcelona.

***

Barcelona is perhaps the most dynamic city of the Mediterranean. Its history, climate and inhabitants also make it an ideal place to create. Proof of this can be found in the work of artists such as Gaudí, Picasso, Miró and Tapies.

Stanton arrived in Barcelona in 1986 having recently finished a period of 3 years in New York City, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts. After receiving his MFA (Master of Fine Arts), he worked as a creative director in a large publishing house and began to exhibit his work in group shows around the city.

Professionally, he had the opportunity to travel to England, and to visit Italy, Morocco and Spain. He traveled a number of times to Barcelona before finally deciding to live there. In 1987 Barcelona had been designated the Olympic city for 1992, and the city was preparing for the event with an enormous creative energy.

Stanton's work at that time was conceptual but with a strong painterly direction and plastic quality. Juxtaposition of images, contrapuntal typographic messages were integrated into his pieces, as was a certain propensity for a free use of materials. In Barcelona he began to paint and show his work to other artists and galleries.

Between 1988 and 1997 he exhibited with Jean Pierre Guillemot in Piscolabis and Vinçon, and had shows in Trade Art, Quart Monfalcon Gallery in Barcelona, Ku Gallery in Ibiza, and the Jorge Albero Gallery in Madrid.

The change in his work is important during this time. The conceptual games gave way to more direct images with autobiographical elements. These large-scale works on paper were characterized by the use of collage and a reduced chromatic range as well as a quick but well directed brush stroke.

In 1992 Stanton had three important solo shows: in the Ku Gallery, Ibiza; the Sala Nonell, Barcelona and the Jorge Alcolea Gallery, Madrid. These exhibits show the maturing of his work and the direction he would then follow until 1996. Fresh Mediterranean colors, complex compositions, exaggerated perspectives and observations about everyday life with an outlook that alternates between tender and incisive. There is in this period a determined intention to portray an era, with its life styles, protagonists, fashion and ways.

From 1992 to 1996, Stanton exhibited in the Jorge Alcolea Gallery, Madrid, the Joan Oliver Maneu Gallery in Palma de Mallorca, the Jordi Barnadas Gallery in Barcelona, the Helena Ramos Gallery in Cadaqués and others. His work was included in museum shows in the Santa Monica Art Center, and the Contemporary Culture Center in Barcelona, as well as in important private collections in Spain, Italy and France.

Since 1997, after having lived in Barcelona for a decade, Stanton has introduced important changes in his work. Although his paintings and sculptures continue to be characterized for their chromatic intensity, formally his work has entered a new phase. This change was initiated after a determined study of the work of the twentieth century modern masters (Matisse, Picasso, Gris and Leger) and incorporates elements of synthetic cubism in a very personal way. This work shows a rapid maturity, includes a new painterly tension, and an interest in the passing of time coupled with a search for timelessness.

In his most recent exhibitions he has begun to work with volumetric compositions, with bas-reliefs that extend the surface areas. The materials include wood, cardboard, and foam core as well as painted sculptures in wood.

SOLO SHOWS

1986
Perozzi Gallery (The Blue Angel), New York

1987
Perozzi Gallery (The Blue Angel), New York

1990
Galería 4rt, Barcelona

1991
Galería 4rt, Barcelona
Galería Ku, Ibiza

1992
Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid
Galería Ku, Ibiza
Sala Nonell, Barcelona

1993
Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid
Jockey Club, Ibiza

1994
Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid
Galería Joan Oliver, Palma de Mallorca

1996
Galería Jordi Barnadas, BCN

1997
New Art, Hotel Majestic, BCN

1998
Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid

1999
Galería Trece, Ventalló

2000
Galería M' José Castellví, BCN
Galeria Jorge Albero, Madrid

GROUP SHOWS

1985
Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Fl

1986
Cornell Fine Art Center, Winter Park, Fl

1987
SVA Museum, New York

1988
SVA Museum, New York

1989
Trade Art, BCN

1990
Sala Vinçon, BCN

1991
Sala FAD, BCN
S.O.S. Racisme, Centre Civic, BCN
Galeria Cascais, Ibiza
American Prints, BCN

1992
American Prints, BCN
Sala FAD, Barcelona

1993
American Prints, BCN

1994
Porta Tancada, BCN
Galería Helena Ramos, Cadaqués

1995
"Retrat de Barcelona" CCCB, BCN
Galería Helena Ramos, Cadaquès

1996
Central d'Energia, BCN

1997
Galeria Helena Ramos, Cadaqués
Galería Jorge Albero, Madrid
Art Expo, American Prints, BCN
Galería Contrast, Barcelona

1998
Art Expo, MªJosé Castellví, BCN

1999
Galería Serrahima, BCN

2000
Signos del Siglo, Reina Sofia

2001
"Michelin" La Santa, Barcelona
Galeria Jordi Barnadas, Barcelona

Text from LA VANGUARDIA, by Maria Lluisa Borràs, (June 17th, 2000)

It was Olga Spiegel who best defined the artistic personality of Stanton when in this same paper, she wrote: "He enjoys painting and you can see it. He loves color and his paintings emphasize it. He admires the great masters and he renders homage to them."

Like many Anglo Saxon painters, Stanton is definitely a lover of color; intense, brilliant, excitable. He loves likewise the great art of the twentieth century and he gulps it down in a material sense almost like the Brazilian Oswald de Andrade wrote, in 1928, in his "Manifest of the Anthropophagia," on which, by the way, the last Biennale of Brazil was based.

Stanton, as if he was following Oswald de Andrade, seems to have cannibalized the masters of modernism, materially swallowing their painting, and after having digested it all, he proceeds to assimilate it until discovering the true values that constitute it, and finally make it his. His work is based on fragments that he recomposes aesthetically, half way between Pop and Kitsch, making gala of the imagination, and this allows him to achieve a true vision of what he had planned to describe (Formentera, "Studio Night" or "Big Woman"). He also assembles dispersed elements in a collage, until he composes an image, usually in a gay, humorous way (Mrs. Picasso Head).

Another of his un-discussable achievements is to have given to his work an unusual sensation of dynamics and rhythm ("Disco" or "Hot"). His detractors say that he makes consumerist art, and it's true that his work could hardly exist without the consumerist society.

Stanton, whose work was exhibited for the first time in 1980, has earned a name that is synonym of humor, of vibrating color, of fragmented shapes, and in summary, synonym of the survival of that very close atmosphere that Matisse called "the joy of living."

<< Back to the gallery | Contact