Antonio Villanueva

Antonio Villanueva will present Ibiza & Love Letters at Es Polvorí, a venue of Es Baluard Museu d’Art Contemporani de Palma in Eivissa, as part of the OFF Program of CAN Art Fair 2026. Since 2022, this initiative has promoted the work of Balearic artists through exhibitions held across the Pityusic Islands, between Ibiza and Formentera, with the support of Paya Hotels.

Ibiza & Love Letters

Is he a player who paints or a painter who plays? Antonio Villanueva’s art is always in motion, like the bouncing ball of a roulette wheel that never ceases to spin, like the Tao that dared to paint. His works live and breathe, flow and celebrate themselves in a marvellous state of incompleteness that invites the viewer to participate through imagination. A natural Panta Rhei: immerse yourself in the eternal current, for stagnation extinguishes desire.

Ibiza & Love Letters gathers marked cards from Villanueva’s vital deck. A sensual wanderer, he paints at night the way a leopard hunts in darkness.

He drifts through the bars and cafés of the island of Bes, the dancing, promiscuous and ithyphallic god. He observes the human fauna of Las Dalias and Ca n'Alfredo like a neurotic orchestra conductor who seeks not to play the notes themselves, but the energy that exists between them: flashes of whisky and the essence of femininity. He stalks the prey that will ultimately devour him, yet always leaves upon the sheets an unctuous scent transformed into the alchemy of the muse, the delta of Venus: “The hooves of my horse carry to me the fragrance of the flowers they tread upon.”

A fortunate autodidact, Villanueva possesses the instinct of the street, a deeply personal visual language and an anarchic spirit. Could he paint this way if he were a hermit? Rien ne va plus! He knows how to shed his skin in order to remain faithful to himself, reinventing his identity within the endless orgy of Samsara. His ego is as vast as his laughter. Love is humour. And it is through his undulating, volatile and dissonant personality that he fills his canvases with an unmistakable joy for life.

Villanueva, wanderer and gambler, Ibiza is your rogue and sentimental harbour. Shipwrecked men? Pleasure exists wherever one chooses to find it, wherever one writes and paints love letters.

For the fourth consecutive year, Paya Hotels reaffirms its strong commitment to Balearic artistic creation and to strengthening the visibility of the local cultural sector through its support of the OFF CAN 2026 Program. This initiative not only promotes Balearic talent, but also seeks to connect Ibiza and Formentera through contemporary art.