Sofia Gandarias was born in 1957, in Guernica, Vizcaya, Madrid, and died on January 23, 2016.

He was one painter Spanish.

Sofía graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts of San Fernando of the Complutense University of Madrid .

Kokoscha,pint-Alma Mahler, in 1978, three very interrelated figures whose fates are highly symbolic to the zeitgeist.

His work was an intensive professional activity: his paintings, drawn from the knowledge and commitment in series like The protest of silence in 1980, or Presences, in 1986, were well earned by both critics and collectors.

“It is the path of the visionary eye of the artist who captures the past and projected into the future, it is that dowsing look and like a sleepwalker with which Gandarias has treated this series,” said on of many the Paraguayan writer Augusto Roa Bastos .

Later after, Carlos Fuentes believes that the style fits Gandarias “in the great tradition Velázquez, Spanish, the portrait is sign of identity, proof of existence and ironic exercise between the famous and infamous visible invisibility, connecting the monarch and the anarchy, between Philip IV and workers dressed as gods, between Carlos IV and lovers of the festival of San Isidro, he offers us stories of his time in which the figure and time are inseparable “.

Gandarias was married in 1987, in the Italian city of Venice with the socialist politician Enrique Baron , former transport minister and MEP who would be elected that year and later become President of the European Parliament, and in 1988 his son Alexander was born.

He resumed his activity in Venice with a “Retrospective”, in 1990.

Working with Yehudi Menuhin, Portrays the master violinist in 1993, he started working with his Foundation; “It’s the wisest man I ever knew,” said Gandarias.

Following that, Sofia commitment to world peace and culture are shown in his statement “Pour la tolerance” in the Grande Arche de la Fraternité of Paris, opened by Federico Mayor Zaragoza, Simone Veil and Barbara Hendricks ; and his portrait “Love Prayer” is the symbol of the exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of UNESCO. From 2000 immersed in the study the Italian writer Primo Levi, on the cornerstone book ” If This Is a Man ​​”.

Then the “Primo Levi, Memory” series was born, a part of his life and his later work: thanks to this author, recounts the horror of the death camps and the human pain of raw and comprehensive manner.

After the attacks the 9/11, he painted the “NY 11 S” series.

He has composed 13 pictures, entitled “Miserere (Julianna)” which is on the 9/11 Memorial Museum NY.

In his third millennium, reprises “Alma-Kokoschka-Mahler” with “Kafka, the visionary” series of 64 paintings that goes far beyond the merely pictorial.

Gandarias was a trustee of the Yehudi Menuhin Foundation, in Spain and the Istituto Internazionale dell’Opera di Verona and the Poetry of UNESCO.

His other honors and awards received were from Knight of Arts and Letters (2005) and the Legion of Honor (2010), granted by the French Republic .

Sofía Gandarias’s work can be found in museums of Albacete, Santander, Gernika, Bordeaux, Ca Pesaro (Venice), museum Malabo (Guinea), Museo Provincial (Ciudad Real) and the Casa Museo Federico Garcia Lorca (Fuentevaqueros, Granada).

And also found in the Menuhin Foundation at the European Parliament in the Spanish Senate (Madrid), in the Casa Museu Fernando Pessoa and the Museu da Cidade, in Lisbon, the Carlos III University, in Getafe, Madrid, Prince of Asturias Foundation The Royal Palace of Jordan, in Amman, in the British Red Cross, the headquarters of the UNESCO in Paris, the University of Dili, in East Timor, the Stichting Veranneman, in Belgium, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, in Black Island, in Chile, the Musée Garnier, in Palais Garnier , Paris Opera, the Fondazione Levi Montalcini and the Chair Julio Cortazar, in Guadalajara , Mexico, National Library, in Lima, Peru, 9/11 Memorial Museum, in New York.

His work can also be seen in private collections in Paris, Venice, Brussels, Antwerp, Lisbon, London, Copenhagen, Strasbourg, Milan, Los Angeles, Boston, Quito, La Paz, Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Santander, Mallorca, Mexico, New York, Tokyo, Copenhagen, San Jose, Costa Rica.

Sofía Gandarias passed away at 58 yrs old in Madrid.