Javier de Juan Jaen, Spain, 1958
Four panels of 300 x 150 m
Further images
With his series of three monumental murals, each measuring three meters high by six meters wide, Javier de Juan offers a panoramic and fragmented portrait of Madrid. Taken together, these works do not simply map the city; they narrate it, weaving the everyday and the symbolic into a visual cartography that is as emotional as it is physical.
The scale of the triptych is immersive. Viewers are not asked to contemplate Madrid from afar, but to inhabit it from within. Each panel condenses the pulse of the city—its density, its layered histories, and the urgency of its contemporary rhythms—while also revealing its gaps, silences, and open spaces.
The three murals function as collective stages, each one capturing different facets of the metropolis. Instead of offering a single vantage point, De Juan embraces simultaneity: scenes and figures proliferate, overlap, and coexist like layers of a palimpsest. The result is a Madrid that feels both recognizable and elusive, rooted in plazas and avenues yet open to imagination.
As a whole, the series becomes a visual chronicle of Madrid, where monumentality is not a display of power but an act of memory. The murals act as both archive and mirror: preserving the vibration of a city in perpetual motion while inviting each spectator to recognize their own urban experience within them.
Faithful to his hybrid language—between painting, drawing, and graphic narrative—Javier de Juan does not merely illustrate the city. Through these three vast murals, he reinvents it, revealing Madrid as multiple, unpredictable, and alive.
Exposiciones
Cada vez que me miras, Centro cultural Conde Duque, MadridJoin our mailing list
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