Félix de la Concha


Félix de la Concha is a painter. Born in León, Spain, he resides in Pittsburgh and Madrid.
In 1985 he was selected to participate in the Primera Muestra de Arte Joven where his work was awarded. Since then he has had several shows, mainly in Europe and the United States, including one person exhibitions in the Columbus Museum of Art, Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Hood Museum of Art, the Frick Art & Historical Center, Museo de Bellas Artes in Santander, Museo del Chopo, México D.F., Centro Cultural La Recoleta in Buenos Aires, and Centro Rómulo Gallegos in Caracas.
His work One A Day: 365 Views of the Cathedral of Learning, a series that he painted every day during one year while staying in Pittsburgh, is a permanent exhibit at the University of Pittsburgh's Alumni Hall. He has also done other series of paintings in different places such as Rome, Santander, Seville and Cairo.
He has focused on a particular format of portraiture. It can be seen in video the sitter talking, and the painting evolving from blank canvas to the very conclusion of the work. As painted neither from photographs neither from previous sketches, and usually with a single session, eventual errors are keen to him. He introduces the term pictorial anacoluthon, going back to the Greek origin of the term anacoluthon and its rhetorical use: As with spoken language, there will be mistakes, both in the portrait’s symmetry, and in its sense of completeness. However, what may be considered, at first, a formal mistake may also be a form of expression. However he accomplishes accurate detail.
The first of this series was exhibited at the Museo Contemporáneo de Madrid in 2008.
51 portraits were exhibited at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, with the theme of Conflict and Reconciliation in 2009.
He has also immersed himself in communities, whether in New Hampshire and Vermont, Iowa or Pennsylvania, or in his native Spain. He has portrayed and interviewed Holocaust survivors around the world.
More recently, he has become interested in portraits with music and synaesthesia, as his performance with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra.
On he accepted the invitation to an extended residency with unprecedented access to the building and grounds.

List of exhibitions

One man shows