Claudia Alonso-Allende presents her solo exhibition Madrid al fresco at Marquesa Gallery.
The exhibition, curated by José Manuel Cruz Valdovinos, brings together a series of unpublished works inspired by traditional frescoes from Madrid, reimagined from a contemporary sensibility and a deeply personal technical and poetic approach.
Open to the public since May 23, 2025 at the gallery’s headquarters in Carabanchel, Madrid al fresco is an exercise in visual rereading of the pictorial and architectural heritage, but also a contemporary proposal that invites us to think of painting not only as an image, but as time, memory and layer.
An artist between the material and the symbolic
Claudia Alonso - Allende
Claudia Alonso-Allende (Madrid, 1993) is a visual artist trained in Spain. His work is inspired by classical frescoes, reinterpreted to distort their original forms and transform them into abstract compositions. These works play with the viewer’s perception and memory: masses of colour, seemingly random, combine with memories and associations to form human figures and scenes. However, what is really contemplated are brushstrokes and intent-laden nebulae.
The creative process behind this series is as fascinating as the result. Starting from a solid academic and classical background, Claudia faced the challenge of abstracting her compositions. His quest led him to explore how the human brain perceives and recognizes forms, drawing on concepts from medicine to understand visual processes.
The curator: dialogue between history and the present
The exhibition has been curated by Professor José Manuel Cruz Valdovinos, one of the most relevant figures in the History of Art in Spain. His collaboration with Claudia Alonso-Allende provides a layer of historiographical depth that enhances the dialogue between contemporary creation and Madrid’s artistic legacy.
For Cruz Valdovinos, Claudia’s proposal is not a nostalgic exercise, but an opening to new ways of looking at what has already been seen. Its curatorial reading connects the reinterpreted frescoes with the current urban rhythms, in which the image is constantly fragmented, consumed and transformed. In this sense, Madrid al fresco works as a rescue operation, but also as a question: what does it mean today to represent, preserve or reinterpret a fresco?
Ladder of El Escorial, Mixed media on canvas, 120 x 140 cm. 2025
Space as part of the discourse
In Madrid al fresco, the works of Claudia Alonso-Allende are not presented as isolated pieces, but as part of a spatial narrative specifically designed for the gallery’s architecture. The walls become extensions of the frescoes themselves; the fragments dialogue with each other and with the visitor, who is immersed in a visual experience where time seems to overlap in pictorial layers.
The installation, carefully designed in collaboration between artist, curator and gallery, seeks precisely that feeling of “contemporary freshness”, where each work seems to be part of an invisible wall that is being reconstructed in the viewer’s eyes.
An exhibition that talks about what remains
Beyond the visual, Madrid al fresco invites us to reflect on the symbolic value of the remains, what is preserved and what is transformed. At a time when time seems accelerated and the ephemeral dominates the artistic and digital language, the work of Claudia Alonso-Allende proposes a pause, a slower, more material contemplation.
The artist works with different materials that refer to the ancient procedures of fresco painting, but she moves them towards her own terrain, in which the materials dialogue with the conceptual. The colour palette, which oscillates between earthy tones, limestones and luminous ochres, evokes the warmth and erosion of time.
Each work in the exhibition functions as a sort of palimpsest: a surface that has been written, erased and rewritten. Claudia explores not only a pictorial technique, but a way of thinking about cultural identity as something alive, fragile and in permanent reconfiguration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8yagp-2STU
Practical data
Exhibition: Madrid al fresco
Artist: Claudia Alonso-Allende
Curator: José Manuel Cruz Valdovinos
Dates: From 23 May to 31 July 2025
Lugar: Marquesa Gallery, Calle Marquesa de Argüeso 38, Madrid
Opening hours: Wednesday to Friday from 11:00 to 19:00 / Saturday from 11:00 to 14:30
Visits after hours: By appointment (+34 671 206 874)
Visit Madrid al fresco and discover how the frescoes of the past can continue to speak in the present.