site.btaExhibition by Spanish Artist Josep Maria Miralles Opens in Sofia

The HERITAGE Gallery will open the season on Tuesday evening with an exhibition of paintings by Spanish artist Josep Maria Miralles, the first foreign artist to be featured in the gallery this year. The exhibition will be open until September 22, the organizers announced on Tuesday.

According to the gallery's team, the exhibition will feature works by Josep Maria Miralles from different creative periods, from the 1960s to the present day. The curator is Silvana Papadami.

Josep Maria Miralles was born in 1937 in Barcelona, ​​in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, in a family with a religious spirit. He studied drawing, but it can be said that he was self-taught. His idol was Alex Raymond who created comic characters like Flash Gordon and Rip Kirby. Also, Milton Caniff, Frank Robbins, Harold Foster, Jose Luis Salinas. In the sphere of illustration, he was inspired by Bob Peak, Bernie Fuchs, Joseph Bowler, Frank McCarthy, and Norman Rockwell.

At the beginning of the 50s, he started drawing professionally.  In 1953, at the age of fifteen, he met Josep Toutain, when he was beginning to gather illustrators to form what in the future would be the study of Selecciones Ilustradas. Josep Maria Miralles started working for the youth magazine market: Valentine, Marilyn, Roxy and Serenade. He later left the comic strip to focus on colour illustrations for magazines in different fields and book covers for many countries. He worked for Afha and Editorial Rollan in Spain, Hachette in France and many other publishers. He contributed to several Illustrated Bibles for the publishers Tyndale and Reader’s Digest. Until recently, he was still doing religious-type paintings for a New Jersey publishing house.

In the mid-70s, he started working for the newly created Norma Agency, where he worked for the English market (Futura), the German (Bastei, Pabel, Kelter), and serials for Scandinavia (which he made until very recently). Later, through Selecciones Ilustradas, he illustrated the Star Wars license with great success.

A few years ago, he made the natural leap for him to Gallery painting where he could show himself much more freely. His first exhibition was at the Jaimes Gallery on Paseo de Gracia in Barcelona, ​​and since then he has continued to alternate between his work as an illustrator and as a painter. He has had exhibitions in Barcelona (Jaimes, College of Architects, Almirall Gallery, Club Dhin), Arenys de Mar, Olot (Armengol Gallery) and numerous group exhibitions.