“Within the figurative I am not interested in representing reality, I try to immerse myself in the deepest part of the interior to represent imaginary, enigmatic worlds from a current look. The real representation of the unreal.

Throughout history since ancient Mesopotamia, mankind has employed art as a one-way ticket to fantastic worlds and dreamlike universes.”

Romulo Royo

Romulo Royo is an international artist dedicated to contemporary art born in Zaragoza (Spain). Since 2000 his work is exhibited in various private collections, foundations and museums after his beginnings in the professional world, which began at the early age of eighteen years old, making illustrations for the publishing house Norma Editorial and publishing internationally on covers of novels and comic magazines for publishers such as Eura (Italy), Rad Moskbay (Russia), Bastei (Germany) and in 2000 he decided to turn and devote himself fully to the world of painting that also began at this time.

He has solo exhibitions thanks to the Meta Project that travels through Valencia, A Coruña (Spain), Verona, Milan (Italy), Frankfurt (Germany), Tokyo (Japan). In turn, his work is exhibited at the Museo Pablo Serrano, Museo Provincial de Huesca, Museo de Teruel, and published in various art magazines such as Trebede, Bonart, Exit, Lapiz or Mu Magazine among others. American Express commissions him some Limited Edition Lithographs gathered in a folder and titled Perpetual Present.

From 2004 onwards he exhibits in important private galleries, Foundations, Museums and international fairs, such as Art Forum Berlin, FIAC, Los Angeles Art Show, ARCO Madrid, Art Miami, CIGE Beijing China, ART International Instanbul or ART Wynwood, among others.

In 2006 he undertook a trip to Moscow with Luis Royo to work on the great Medvedev Dome, in a castle in the middle of the icy Russian Taiga. The book Dome compiles the entire creative process of about seven months prior to the work, as well as all the physical and mental effort that the artists had to endure during their four-month stay on the scaffolding, painting the frescoes in oil.

During this period he made some series such as Siamese or Metal-Piel, composed of paintings and sculptures that are contemplated in prestigious spaces such as the National Museum Metelkova of Slovenia, Can Framis Museum of the Vila Casas Foundation in Barcelona, the X Biennial of the Martínez Guerricabeitia Foundation in the Museum of the City of Valencia, the Fran Daurel Foundation in Madrid, the Maeztu Museum in Estella or the IV Biennial of Contemporary Art in Moscow.

From 2009, his series Blackened Times, begins with an exhibition at the XXV Biennial of Alexandria of the National Museum of Alexandria to later travel to different countries. The Alcort Foundation commissions a 1500 kg aluminum sculpture, which they add to their collection and exhibit in the foundation’s gardens. The piece, Siameses, is included in the book by Romulo Royo titled Videncia, Velamiento y Ceguera, whose texts and exhibition curatorship were carried out by Fernando Castro Flórez.

That same year he collaborated with Luis Royo on the large format paintings for the oriental-tinged Dead Moon book, published worldwide together with an I-Ching deck with his images, among other multimedia products. This collaboration, together with the previous one in Moscow, would give rise to a project that encompasses different disciplines, becoming a far-reaching multimedia project: Malefic Time. The initiative brings together several international books with paintings and illustrations, novels, sculptures made by Yamato (USA) and Nocturna (Spain), manga and merchandising such as calendars, published by Pyramid (Great Britain) or Sellers Publishing (USA), tarot cards by Fournier, role-playing games, video clips with Avalanch, etc.

Published in Spectrum XVIII The Best In Contemporary Fantastic Art, the work entitled Llegará el día. He exhibits at the Santa Monica center accompanied by an edition of the book On-Off and in galleries such as Miguel Marcos Gallery (Spain), MDA Gallery (Sweden), in Fnac, which itinerates through different cities, Schwalbe 54 Gallery (Frankfurt), etc. and his work is also shown in numerous fairs, such as ARCO Madrid where he exhibits regularly since 2012.

From 2012 to 2016 the three books of the Malefic Time trilogy are published: Apocalypse, 110 Katanas and Akelarre of international circulation translated into more than eight languages and published by Cross Cult (Germany), Bragelonne (France), Norma Editorial (Spanish and English), Rizzoli Lizard (Italy), Azbuka (Russia).

Between 2014 and 2020 he makes series such as Goddesses of Nibiru or Flowers and Thorns that are exhibited in galleries such as Kavachinina Contemporary Gallery (Miami), Galeria Miguel Marcos (Spain), Galería Huberty & Breyne (Brussels) among others and her works for the first time are auctioned in well-known auction houses such as Christie’s Paris and Brussels, Ketterer Kunst (Munich), Galartis (Switzerland) or the Organized by The Womanity Foundation, auction conducted by the renowned Simon de Pury. Prestigious galleries such as Gagosian, Miguel Marcos and Aquavella, among others, took part in it. Also, during those years and the following ones, he has been present in the previously mentioned fairs such as Art Miami, Gige Bejing China, ART International Istanbul, ARCO Madrid, etc. and fantasy fairs such as Fantasy Basel or New York Comic-Con.

In addition to exhibitions in private galleries and fairs, in 2023 he exhibits “Art Generations”, curated by Mauro Bruni at the Palazzo Ducale at the Lucca Comics & Games Fair, the most prestigious exhibition space worldwide dedicated to fantasy. The following year his work is shown at the Museum of Modern European Art MEAM, with the exhibition “The dream of fantasy”. Together with this, his previous series dedicated to the oriental world that have a Zen aesthetic, as in his series Goddesses of Nibiru, and a cyberpunk halo as seen in his work Your Sexy Beast, lead him to an exhibition curated by Jaime Romero Leo at the Centro Cultural Hispano-Japonés de Salamanca.

HIS WORK
Romulo Royo’s unique and distinctive pictorial language is inspired and nourished by diverse global and historical references. His work intertwines classical mythology and cinematic fantasy with illustration and comics from the 1970s and 1980s, reinterpreted from a contemporary perspective.

He has built a world of his own, with an infinite universe.
We could include his art within a new fantastic art, even with some lights of a new surrealism.

These rich visual and narrative traditions immerse us in a world of dreams, where the female gaze takes on a hypnotic protagonism, positioning herself as the protagonist of the scene, mystical and enigmatic.

Royo presents us with a space that transcends conventional understanding, a space that transits between the future and the past, creating dreamlike and sometimes apocalyptic universes. His artistic discourse moves between delicacy, strength and eroticism, juxtaposed with mystery and death.

Each scene invites the viewer to construct his or her own story, becoming an exercise in visual language. In front of his images, there is no linear or framed message; his works incite us to immerse ourselves in our own imagination and formulate our own discourse. An introspective journey that defies the limits of space and time, revealing the depth and complexity of the human experience.

His handling of techniques is broad, resolved with great mastery, using watercolor, airbrush, graphite, acrylic and oil, this last one being his favorite, which allows him to work an expressive and powerful brushstroke while refined.

His references over the years have been many, he names classics such as Francisco de Goya, Rembrandt van Rijn, Gustave Doré and contemporaries such as Yoshitaka Amano, H. R. Giger, or Katsuhiro Ōtomola creator of Akira.

The taste for the sensuality of the occult, shadows, challenging figures, and in essence fantasy, does not stem from the Homage to Goya project, but goes back to the beginnings of the artist’s career.

Mythology, a source of inspiration for countless artists throughout history and an essential part of the collective imagination, could not be left out of Romulo Royo’s work.

In this case, he reinterprets Artemis, who carries her bow, but with a unique aesthetic: the goddess has Asian features and wears an eclectic outfit, impossible to associate with a specific culture. This representation transports us to a different world, inhabited by enigmatic creatures and crossed by ships in the sky, creating an atmosphere that fuses the mythical with the fantastic.
Romulo Royo manages to capture through glazes and ethereal atmospheres figures from other worlds, other cultures and other times.
If in El Aquelarre, Homage to Goya, we see how the artist travels to the past, to the world of the Pre-Raphaelites through his figures, clothes and lights, with his series “Goddesses of Nibiru” he takes us to the celestial body of Babylonian mythology, through his dreamed goddesses.

With DEMO-CRAZY, Time Erased the Kyogen Theater and There’s no future, we travel to other cultures through circles or circular gates, in front of which we are greeted by women who observe us with a mysterious gaze.
These journeys through canvases, boards, oil and acrylic are timeless, and speak to us of a world beyond, intangible and imagined, that only resides in the mind of the artist and in the final work.

HIS WORLD
The common thread throughout this work is the world of dreams, an imaginary full of nuances and fantasy. This universe unfolds between two recurring themes: apocalyptic science fiction and mythology, also encompassing worlds inspired by ancient cultures.

In the first aspect, apocalyptic or dystopian science fiction, he goes back to the beginning of his career, when, at the age of 18, he was working on commissions as well as free pieces, including covers for European and Russian publishers, as well as the Malefic Time project.

This narrates an apocalyptic near future, interweaving myths and legends. The gods and demons in this narrative do not conform to the traditional Christian view. Demons are shown as ambivalent: grim and lethal, yet beautiful and sympathetic to human passions and flaws. In contrast, angels are depicted as authoritarian and cruel figures, for whom human beings are merely servants punished for transgressing divine laws.

In short, Malefic Time stands as a hymn to individual freedom and acceptance of diversity, advocating respect for what is different, defying the norms and restrictions that society has imposed on us.

Series such as “Flowers and Thorns” and “Goddesses of Nibiru” draw from mythology and build dream worlds that take place in the artist’s imaginary. These works explore creation and destruction, life and death, posing questions to the viewer: What is happening or has happened? Is the protagonist the threatened or the threat?
Through the representation of opposites, he seeks to merge and blend these elements, presenting them in their intrinsic beauty as an integral part of human existence.

Older series such as “Wonderful Toys” and “Siameses” are complements to his universe of dreams, the intention being that of criticism of violence and global wars, of which many states are participants despite the remoteness of the conflict. “Wonderful Toys”, in particular, uses satire to incorporate pop elements and icons of our time, ironically reflecting the hypocrisy of these states that often divert attention to superficial violence to hide the real cruelties that are perpetuated.