Exhibition of the UNED collection of the painter Antonio Ballesta at the Vista Alegre Hall in Torrevieja

On Friday, April 17th, at 8:00 PM, the Vista Alegre Exhibition Hall will host the opening of an exhibition of oil paintings by the artist Antonio Ballesta, entitled "The Ineffable Trace ," curated by Jesucristo Riquelme. This will be an opportune moment for contemporary artists residing in the area surrounding the salt-producing city to meet.

On June 23, 2025, the painter Antonio Ballesta Campello signed the donation of 39 paintings from his private collection to the UNED (National University of Distance Education) Center in Torrevieja, in the presence of the Councilor for Education and Universities, Ricardo Recuero. The deed of receipt was signed by the renowned artist and by the director of the UNED Center in Elche, Francisco Escudero.

Antonio Ballesta (Redován, 1949) has dedicated his life to painting, a passionate devotee of art. Although his early works were watercolors and mixed media on wood and canvas with a figurative style, he soon moved towards geometric abstraction. Ballesta's conceptual art, from the end of the last century to the present, stands out for its technique: the pigmentation of his palette, the stripping of paint from the canvas, the achievement of an original chromatism, and the composition or structure of his forms.

Ballesta has dedicated thematic series of paintings to the most important European thinkers: political figures who shaped Europe, such as Robert Schumann; philosophers like María Zambrano; and poets like Cavafy, Miguel Hernández, and Federico García Lorca. He also recreates the landscape of the Vega Baja del Segura in his oil paintings, always inspired by the emotions evoked by classical music and the mystical art of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neoclassical periods, as well as by the abstract masters of the last century.

Among his early works, still lifes stand out, which are housed in the Museum of Drawing in Sabiñánigo (Huesca), as well as pieces from a collection of asymmetrical works that break with the conventional quadrangular format of paintings. He has also dedicated his work to reflecting on the impact of Covid-19 and the poetic journey of a life devoted to artistic creation.

A year ago, the issue of RELACES (April-July 2025), the Latin American journal of studies on bodies, emotions and society, published in Argentina, with worldwide distribution, illustrated its cover with an oil painting by Antonio Ballesta.

The paintings are intended to artistically decorate the university spaces of the UNED in Torrevieja at the new university headquarters.