Alberto Fernández Hurtado’s “Deep Forest” in Barcelona: Eleven Paintings on Wood About the Animal Within

A white boar. A red cow. A rider in the act of falling. The titles alone of the paintings in Alberto Fernández Hurtado’s “Deep Forest” at 3 Punts Galeria in Barcelona read like the cast of a fable. The exhibition, open from 5 November 2026 to 2 January 2027, brings eleven new oil paintings on wood by the Segovian painter to the Catalan capital — a compact, coherent body of work about the wilderness we carry inside.

A painter from Segovia

Alberto David Fernández Hurtado was born in Segovia in 1975. His career has been built largely through Spain’s demanding network of painting competitions, the traditional proving ground for figurative and atmospheric painters in the country. The gallery’s artist page notes several national prizes, among them First Prize at the Certamen Nacional de Pintura ACOR, as well as participation in the Premios Ejército at IFEMA in Madrid (2011, 2012) and the AXA painting prize in Burgos (2010, 2012, 2013). His work is held in public, institutional and private collections.

Recent solo exhibitions point to the genesis of the present show: Paisajes Humanos (Human Landscapes) at IE University in Madrid in 2023, and The Deep Forest at the IE Creativity Center in Segovia earlier in 2026. Barcelona now receives a new, expanded chapter of that series.

The forest as an inner territory

The gallery frames the series in a single line: Deep Forest “explora el bosque como metáfora del territorio interior” — it treats the forest as a metaphor for inner life. The animals that appear in it are not wildlife studies. They stand for impulses, emotional states and moments of transformation, occupying what 3 Punts describes as an ambiguous space between the conscious and the unconscious.

That puts Fernández Hurtado in a long lineage. The dark wood is one of the oldest images in European culture for confusion and self-discovery, and animals as emblems of passions run from medieval bestiaries to Symbolist painting. What keeps the work from feeling antiquarian is the way it is painted.

Glazes, chance and control

Fernández Hurtado builds his images through glazes and transparencies combined with spontaneous gestures. The gallery describes his aim as a harmonious balance between chaos — chance — and order, or structure. In practice this means surfaces that keep a visible record of how they were made: thin veils of colour through which earlier layers glow, interrupted by quicker marks that refuse to be fully controlled.

The choice of wood as a support matters here. A rigid panel takes thin, translucent layers very differently from canvas; it allows for smooth glazing and luminous depth, and it rewards close viewing. Most of the paintings in the show are large horizontal panels of roughly 122 × 162 cm, a format closer to a window or a landscape view than a portrait — fitting for paintings that invite you to look into a space.

What is in the exhibition

All eleven works are dated 2026. The gallery lists them as Espera verde (Green Waiting, our cover image), Hacia la libertad, La caída del jinete, El umbral, La era del jabalí blanco, Mirari, Individuum (the one vertical format, 162 × 122 cm), Vaca roja, Kainos, Sin título and Discernimiento. Read as a sequence, the titles move from waiting and thresholds to freedom, discernment and renewal — kainos is the Greek word for “new.” It is tempting to read the show as a single journey through the woods and out again.

3 Punts and the Barcelona scene

3 Punts Galeria, on Carrer de Trafalgar in Barcelona’s Eixample, is an established commercial gallery and a natural home for a painter whose work rewards slow looking. A late-autumn opening also means the exhibition spans the holiday season, when many visitors pass through the city.

Why it matters

• For collectors: a complete, recent series by a prize-winning Spanish painter, at a scale that suits private interiors while still making a statement.
• For painters: a clear case study in glazing on panel and in letting accident coexist with a controlled image.
• For visitors: a show with a readable symbolic language — animals, thresholds, forests — that opens onto very personal questions.

Visiting information

3 Punts Galeria, Carrer de Trafalgar 37, 08010 Barcelona. 5 November 2026 – 2 January 2027; opening on 5 November (check the time with the gallery). Open Monday 3–8pm, Tuesday to Friday 11am–8pm and Saturday 11am–3pm; holiday hours may vary. Telephone +34 934 512 348, email [email protected].

See the official exhibition page and the artist’s page at 3 Punts, our Deep Forest listing, and more Barcelona and Madrid openings on Upcoming Art Exhibitions in Leading Galleries.