Juan Giralt at Galería Cayón, Madrid: Revisiting the Painter Who Refused to Choose Between Figure and Abstraction

Some painters spend their careers defending a position. Juan Giralt spent his dismantling one. Asked to be either abstract or figurative, he declined both labels, and his canvases — crowded with colour, scraps of collage, painted words and flashes of humour — still resist easy filing. Madrid audiences can reconsider him this winter in the Juan Giralt exhibition at Galería Cayón in Madrid, open from 12 November 2026 to 4 January 2027.

A self-taught painter in postwar Madrid

Giralt was born in Madrid in 1940 and died there in 2007. According to Galería Cayón’s biography, he was largely self-taught. He came of age under the influence of 1950s Informalism, the gestural abstraction that dominated advanced Spanish painting in that decade, and then went looking for something else abroad: he attended a London art college as a non-enrolled student and lived for periods in Paris and Amsterdam, where he encountered the CoBrA group and its raw, childlike expressionism.

Back in Madrid, his early work moved from a post-CoBrA expressionism to what Spanish critics called New Figuration, with a strong Pop accent. MARCO in Vigo, which held a large retrospective in 2023–24, notes that in the mid-1960s his figures owed a debt first to Francis Bacon and then to Pop. In the 1970s he held three solo exhibitions at Galería Vandrés, one of the key galleries of the period, including Papeles, recortables y collages in 1974. Museo Reina Sofía calls him a reference point of New Figuration in Madrid.

From figuration to a language of his own

The decisive shift came in the 1980s. Cayón’s biography describes how, after a period in New York, Giralt began alternating figurative approaches with abstraction, and how he went on — right up to his death — letting abstraction take over more of the surface while holding on to figurative fragments. Collage and painted words became the hinge between the two. A cut-out shape could be read as a body or as a block of colour; a word could be an image or a joke.

The works illustrated on the gallery’s artist page give a sense of that late manner. Zumo de limón (2006) is a large acrylic and collage on canvas measuring 180 × 250 cm; Briznas (2006) is acrylic on fabric; Granada (1994) and Alcohol (2003) are acrylic and collage on paper and card. These are reference images rather than a confirmed checklist for the new show, but they capture what MARCO Vigo singles out as his strengths: a command of colour and a balance between geometric order and gesture.

What to expect at Galería Cayón

Galería Cayón has announced the exhibition with dates and an image but has not yet published a press text, curator or list of works. Visitors should therefore arrive with open eyes rather than a fixed expectation. Given the scope of the estate and the gallery’s long engagement with Spanish twentieth-century painting, a selection that moves across decades would make sense — but the gallery itself is the best source for what is on the walls.

What can be said is that the institutional ground has been laid. In 2015–16 Museo Reina Sofía devoted an exhibition to Giralt, curated by Carmen Giménez and Manuel Borja-Villel, focusing on his final period and on the 1970s works on paper that mark his break with Informalism. The museum described a late practice in which the distinction between figuration and abstraction finally dissolved. MARCO Vigo’s show, curated by Marcos Giralt Torrente and Miguel Fernández-Cid, was presented as the most extensive exhibition of his work to date.

Galería Cayón in Madrid

Galería Cayón occupies two adjoining spaces on Calle Blanca de Navarra in the Chamberí district, a short walk from the Paseo de la Castellana, and also runs spaces in Menorca and Manila. Its current programme pairs José Guerrero and Esteban Vicente, two Spanish painters with deep connections to American abstraction, which makes Giralt — whose New York years also mattered — a logical next chapter.

Why it matters for collectors and painters

Spanish postwar painting has been steadily re-evaluated over the past decade, and figures who sat between movements are among those gaining attention. For collectors, a gallery exhibition following two museum retrospectives is an opportunity to see the work in a more intimate setting and to discuss provenance directly with the gallery. For painters, Giralt offers a lesson in freedom: collage as a way of thinking, text as a formal element, and a stubborn refusal to let style become a cage.

Visiting information

Galería Cayón, Calle Blanca de Navarra 7 y 9, 28010 Madrid. 12 November 2026 – 4 January 2027. Open Monday to Saturday, 11:00–19:00; closed Sunday. Telephone +34 91 310 62 89, email [email protected]. Opening details have not been published — please check with the gallery.

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