Biography of Ernesto Caivano
Spanish artist Ernesto Caivano has achieved international acclaim for his narrative-based ink drawings. What sets him apart is that his work forms a single and ongoing illustrated epic, titled After the Woods.
After the Woods is an ambitious yet timeless tale of two star-crossed lovers torn apart for a thousand years—it is the story of their courtship, separation, reckoning, and eventual evolution. Through time, the lovers transform; the prince matures into an armoured knight while his princess gradually evolves into a modern spaceship. Each drawing is a single episode in the lovers’ long and anxious quest to communicate with each other. The tale represents modern anxieties over ever-encroaching technological intelligence, as well as optimisim for its continued progress.
In terms of stylistic influences, Ernesto Caivano’s work references such diverse sources as Japanese prints, art nouveau, science fiction, archaeology, geometry, botany, medieval literature, and modernist strands of abstraction and minimalism. His work celebrates the fusion of old and new cultural phenomena. The drawings vary vastly in format and scale, sometimes they are on huge panoramic scrolls and at other times are tiny detailed studies.
Ernesto Caivano was born in Madrid in 1972. He studied in New York, first at The Cooper Union and then at Columbia University. Caivano’s work has been the subject of many solo shows including at MoMA PS1 in New York in 2004 and at the White Cube, in London. Caivano has also participated in major group exhibitions, including at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2010, and the Whitney in New York. Today Ernesto Caivano resides mainly in New York.
