Room One, a creative space in the heart of historic Clerkenwell, is delighted to present the first UK exhibition of work by award-winning Spanish artist Oscar Tusquets Blanca. An internationally-renowned architect, designer, writer and painter, whose successful career has spanned many decades and disciplines, Tusquets is exemplary as a ‘Total Artist’.

About Oscar Tusquets Blanca

Born in Barcelona in 1941, Tusquets graduated as an architect from Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona in 1965, and went on to design a number of notable buildings including several exhibition halls in the Musées des Arts Décoratifs at the Louvre, Paris, and most recently, the Toledo metro station in Naples.

A celebrated furniture designer and recipient of the Spanish National Design Award, perhaps the most recognizable of Tusquets’ designs is Dalilips, the iconic sofa that he co-designed in 1975 with his master and friend Salvador Dali, for the Mae West salon at Teatre-Museo de Figueras. A founding member of prestigious design company BD Barcelona, which today holds the exclusive rights to manufacture Dali’s furniture designs, Tusquets’ own designs are held in the collections of high-profile public institutions including MoMA in New York and the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Alongside his work as an architect and designer, Tusquets has also built a successful career as a writer, with critically-acclaimed books including Más que discutible (1994, Tusquets Editores) and Amables personajes (2014, Acantilado). In addition, for over fifty years he has pursued a private vocation as a painter, though he has only recently begun to exhibit his work in public at galleries including Galería Montcada (Anna, 2003), Galería Artur Ramon (Momentos, 2009), and Gallería Ignacio de Lassaleta (Amor y Muerte, 2014).

About Hot Days: 50 Paintings and a Chair

Room One is proud to be hosting Tusquets’ UK gallery debut with an exhibition that will showcase and celebrate his multi-disciplinary talents as a Total Artist.

Set in a space that will be architecturally designed by Tusquets himself, the exhibition will feature a series of oil paintings entitled Hot Days, portraying female nudes in a sequence of erotic, provocative poses. “Eroticism, which at various times throughout Western history inflamed painting and literature, and later cinema, theatre and dance, has these days almost disappeared, the victim of banality and its use in commerce and advertising, which has stripped it of its once disturbing and rebellious nature [...] That is why it is surprising that Oscar Tusquets Blanca has managed to suffuse these images, all of them of great pictorial beauty, with this disquieting, disturbing spirit of true eroticism that fires both the desires and the imagination.” - Mario Vargas Llosa (2010 Nobel Laureate)

The exhibition will also include the worldwide presentation of two limited edition, award-winning Gaulino chairs designed and customised by Tusquets, along with a table and four chair set by BD Barcelona. “How fantastic to design in wood having designed so many things using metal tubes or profiles. You can vary the thickness and give each section just the material it needs on the grounds of statics and aesthetics. The beautiful grain of the ash is left visible, so that every chair is different from the others, and this diversity is accentuated with the irregularities and creases in the leather of the seat. The chair took on a shape that was reminiscent of Antoni Gaudí and the 50s Italian designer Carlo Mollino. For that reason...we decided to call it Gaulino.” - Oscar Tusquets Blanca

To coincide with the exhibition, Tusquets will also present a limited edition Art Book, published in collaboration with Umberto Allemandi. Produced as an edition of 200 copies, the book will include an introductory essay by 2010 Nobel Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, with each copy featuring a personalised watercolour by Tusquets on the title page.