The Centro de Arte Complutense, a museum space and forum for new artistic trends at the UCM, is hosting an exhibition by the artist Luis Priego (Cuenca, 1962), entitled El Jardín de las Hespérides (The Garden of the Hesperides), curated by José Manuel Losada.

"The artist introduces us to this paradisiacal orchard where golden apples grow, captivating nymphs dance and intoxicating songs sound. The event immerses visitors in times past and questions them about their present: the imperious need for the sensual enjoyment of beauty that makes them more human," says Losada.

THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES

A collection of fifty large oil paintings on wood, with unequalled care in the refulgent colours and the superimposition of tones, as well as the aptly chosen texts and musical scores that accompany the paintings.

"It is the allegory of Paradise, the golden dream and a cosmogony, in other words, the beginning of the world and of our civilisation," says Luis Priego, who took eight years to create this work, which will be exhibited in four rooms. Visitors will enjoy the artist's particular dreamlike world in which mythological, philosophical and poetic references are interwoven.

The artist, a professor of Fine Arts, seeks beauty, nothing but beauty. "From the beginning, I set out to make this collection purely figurative, moved by the sensitivity towards the movement that the history of art has experienced up to the 20th century. It's been a hundred years since we've had recourse to the beauty of the plastic. There are many manifestations of political and protest art, relics of the 19th century, when there was a desire to break with classicism. Now is the time to recover the pleasure of beauty, to give space to the beautiful, just because it is beautiful", he concludes.

A GARDEN WITHIN A GARDEN

Isabel García Fernández, Vice-Rector for Culture, Sport and University Extension at the Complutense University of Madrid, argues that there is no better setting for this exhibition than the c art c: "Through the large window that runs along the entire north wall of the hall we look out onto a gentle and peaceful landscape, always green, without evading the seasonal nuances"; and she adds: "we also find another garden created inside, the Garden of the Hesperides, full of colour and inhabited by characters that illuminate and amaze us with their beauty; a unique environment created by the hand of a great artist, Luis Priego, who has given them life and meaning. "

VIDEOS ON THE EXHIBITION THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES

- Montaje de la exposición El Jardín de las Hespérides de Luis Priego

- Inauguración de la exposición "El Jardín de las Hespérides" de Luis Priego

- El Jardín de las Hespérides. Del mito a la belleza. Entrevista a José Manuel Losada, comisario.

- Luis Priego nos revela el proceso detrás de la exposición "El Jardín de las Hespérides"

- Introducción: Hermes y Atlas

- Gilgamesh y la civilización de Enkidu

- Eva en el Paraíso

- Las Furias, o las Euménides