Luis Royo

Luis Royo [born in Olalla, Teruel, 1954] is a Spanish artist, known for his sensual and dark paintings, its apocalyptic imagery, his fantasy worlds and mechanical life forms. It has also recently started doing sculptures of some of his most charismatic images.

He was born in Olalla, a small town in Teruel, Spain. He has produced paintings for his own books and exhibitions, and has also produced art for many different media: video games, music CD and novels covers, tarot cards ...

He is famous for his work collected in books published worldwide, for his illustrations and its secure contributions of original work, always in constant value growth.

Shortly after his birth, Royo's family moved to Zaragoza, where he first started school, his first memories are accompanied with drawing which plays an important role in his life.

His practical standpoint, acquired from his economically humble family, led him to study Technical Drawing for construction. He soon discovered that geometric forms did not satisfy him fully.

Later, he began to study painting, decoration and interior design at the Industrial School and the School of Applied Arts, and combined with different jobs in interior design and decoration studios in 1970 and 1971.

During this time he also combined his work with paint. Influenced by the student revolts of May 1968, he painted large format tiles with social issues and made exhibitions from 1972 to 1977.

The discovery of adult comics with the work of artists such as Enki Bilal and Moebius captive him in 1978 and started drawing comics for different fanzines and comics exhibiting at the Angoulême Comic Fair in 1980.

In 1979 he left his job as a furnish designer, despite already having a child, to devote himself entirely to comics. In 1981 and 1982 began to publish in journals such as 1984, “Comix Rambla Internacional”, and sometimes, in “El Vibora” and “Heavy Metal”.

[source: wikipedia]