The stickers, the street parties or the neighborhood posters announcing movies are elements of popular culture that marked a whole generation during the 70s and 80s. Now, the artist Luis Pérez Calvo recovers this memory of Madrid and intertwines it with references to classical art and contemporary iconography.
Cromos de artista is the exhibition that can be seen on the third floor of CentroCentro, the cultural space located inside the Palacio de Cibeles in Madrid. Admission is free and it will be open from October 23, 2025 to April 26, 2026, from Tuesday to Sunday from 10:00 am to 8:00 pm.
In the exhibition, a selection of the more than 500 pictorial works created by Luis Pérez Calvo in recent years is presented, which combine his taste for the streets of Madrid and for art. The author presents them as if they were stickers, evoking the collection of albums and surprise envelopes that marked his childhood.
Goya, Bazooka chewing gum and an impossible Madrid
The compositions of Cromos de artista establish a dialogue between the everyday elements of the 70s, the streets of Madrid and the high culture of the Prado Museum. Thus, one can find images in which Bazooka chewing gum wrappers cross paths with Goya’ s black paintings, the Beach Boys and AC/DC coexist with ration plates, or Looney Tunes cartoons roam the streets of Carabanchel.
Luis Pérez Calvo uses his imagination to build his cards full of humor, melancholy and multiple layers of reading. He presents us with a chronicler’s gaze that gathers all kinds of art, without paying attention to academic, institutional or commercial criteria. He invites us to remember recent history and appeals to the nostalgia of his contemporaries.
The exhibition is displayed on two black and white murals made in situ, where the artist has created the map of an impossible Madrid. Old museums, galleries, ultra-technological buildings, giant screens, neon signs and elevated highways coexist in this invented city, which functions as a bridge between past, present and future. On it, the different stickers are arranged, providing an explosion of color.
From Lavapiés to the Prado
Knowing the life of Luis Pérez Calvo is essential to understand his artist’s stickers. He grew up in the neighborhoods of Lavapiés and Embajadores, surrounded by a traditional Madrid full of the comics, vinyl records, illustrated encyclopedias, circus shows and street parties that he paints in his works. In addition, his interest in art led him to visit galleries and cultural spaces such as the Prado Museum.
He is currently a consolidated multidisciplinary artist , whose career is marked by the popular Spanish iconography of the 60s, 70s and 80s. He combines techniques such as drawing, collage, painting and ceramics and has held several exhibitions throughout Spain. He has also collaborated in collective projects in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, Cuba and the United States.