Felipe Cardeña is a street

artist An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating the work of art. The most common usage (in both everyday speech and academic discourse) refers to a practitioner in the visual arts o ...

, known for floral patterns, pop art figures and modern collages, many of which are aimed at challenging consumer society. He was born in Spain in 1979, but lived in Cuba for some time. Operating in an anonymous manner, akin to the British artist

Banksy Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based street artist, political activist, and film director whose real name and identity remain unconfirmed and the subject of speculation. Active since the 1990s, his satirical street art and subversive ep ...

, he has held three exhibitions at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

from 2009 to 2013, and has exhibited in Milan, London, Chile and China. His style of anonymous graffiti and street art earned him the name "il Banksy latino" (the Latin Banksy) and the Italian newspaper ''

Corriere della Sera (; ) is an Italian daily newspaper published in Milan with an average circulation of 246,278 copies in May 2023. First published on 5 March 1876, is one of Italy's oldest newspapers and is Italy's most read newspaper. Its masthead has remain ...

'' called him "misterioso in stile Banksy” (Banksy-style mysterious). The Italian art critic

Gillo Dorfles Angelo Eugenio "Gillo" Dorfles (12 April 1910 – 2 March 2018) was an Italian art critic, painter, and philosopher. Biography Born in Trieste to a Gorizian father of Jewish descent and a Genoese mother, Dorfles graduated in medicine, specializ ...

has described Cardeña's work as "kitsch elitario" (elite

kitsch ''Kitsch'' ( ; loanword from German) is a term applied to art and design that is perceived as Naivety, naïve imitation, overly eccentric, gratuitous or of banal Taste (sociology), taste. The modern avant-garde traditionally opposed kitsch ...

). The newspaper ''

'' wrote in May 2008: "The only thing we know is that he was born in

Balaguer Balaguer () is the capital of the ''comarca'' of Noguera, in the province of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. It is located by the river Segre, a tributary to the Ebro. The municipality includes an exclave to the east. Balaguer also has a sister city ...

Spain Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...

, 29 years ago. The rest of the information we have regarding Felipe Cardeña, mysterious

-style art, is fragmentary and contradictory. His floral

collage Collage (, from the , "to glue" or "to stick together") is a technique of art creation, primarily used in the visual arts, but in music too, by which art results from an assembly of different forms, thus creating a new whole. (Compare with pasti ...

s – whose technique was probably developed in jail – and his floral

sticker A sticker is a type of label: a piece of printed paper, plastic, vinyl, or other material with temporary or permanent pressure sensitive adhesive on one side. It can be used for decoration or for functional purposes, depending on the situation. ...

s appear everywhere: his slogan is Power Flower".

Vittorio Sgarbi Vittorio Umberto Antonio Maria Sgarbi (born 8 May 1952) is an Italian art critic, art historian, writer, politician, cultural commentator, and television personality. He is president of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rove ...

wrote that "Felipe Cardeña proposes the amateur technique of collage pursuing a repetitive and obsessive iconography as the daily rosary of a cloistered nun".

References

21st-century Spanish painters Spanish male painters 1979 births Living people 21st-century Spanish male artists {{Spain-painter-stub