JAIME ALEDO

Cartagena 1949

Lives and works in Madrid

A component of the so-called second generation of the New Figuration of Madrid. He is the author of the first study of this artistic phenomenon. (Luis Gordillo y la figuración madrileña de los setenta) (Luis Gordillo and the figuration of Madrid in the seventies).He is also linked to the Estampa gallery.

Jaime Aledo sees the painting as a way to project his thoughts, and the picture as a mental device of great intensity. His work presents a continuous stylistic reformulation preparing the different languages to service the idea. The author proposes to surpass the conflict between form and meaning by fusing sensuality and conceptual depth.

Aledo recovers values of a conceptual nature of the pictorial traditions forgotten by modernity. Each painting is turned into a meticulously plotted out event and painted with a very precise intention to recuperate the conceptual complexity of the painting. The picture is a means to an end, and object independent from the world but that mysteriously refers to it.

Aledo affirms that in painting, it is possible to feel, project, think and do at the same time, a process that remains sediment in the different layers that make up the work. He conceives the pictorial space and a design in which a formal structure is developed, able to mean something.

His paintings present a solid constructive base, using the principal of classic composition, where the geometry is not only a formal, structural and composite element but it also acquires meaning. Aledo creates plots from a specific idea –as can be his comment about modernity or about the idea “art as a theory”– that he develops from the relationship between the different elements that make up his work. The development of these ideas is designed in an extensive series of sketches, studies and tests that constitute a fundamental part in understanding his work.

He has worked on mythological and biblical themes especially in the 80’s. We can highlight among these works basic iconography symbols and archetypes like water, the mountains, the woods, the garden, the night, the twilight, the pedestrian or the mask. In the 90’s, he developed the idea of painted installations, where the painting forms part of the documents that make up the project. In this, we highlight the representation of the poetic events which are understood as commentaries of life, games of plastic and verbal language or picturesque thoughts.

Among the pictorial references the following painters are highlighted: Bellini, Giorgione y Tiziano. Duchamp y Matisse. R.B. Kitaj y Gordillo.

Consulted bibliography: Cuevas, Manolo, “Sin título”, en el catálogo Jaime Aledo, Madrid, Galería Estampa, 2002. Cuevas, Manolo, “Sin título”, en el catálogo Jaime Aledo, Madrid, Galería Estampa, 1994. Cuevas, Manolo, “Sin título”, en el catálogo Jaime Aledo, Madrid, Galería Estampa, 1987. Cruce, “Sin título”, en el catálogo Jaime Aledo, Madrid, El Cruce, 1997. Checa Cremades, Fernando, “Pinturas de Jaime Aledo”, en el catálogo Jaime Aledo, Madrid, Galería Estampa, 1989. Aledo, Jaime, “Sin título”, en De la Torre, Paco, Figuración Postconceptual, Valencia, Fire Drill, 2002. Aledo, Jaime, “Ideas bien planchadas”, Santander, Arte y parte, 2010.