Polígrafa announces Leiko Ikemura's first show in Spain. We will be showing prints published by us and some unique works. Leiko Ikemura (Japan) is a Japanese-Swiss painter and sculptor. She left her country in 1973 and moved to Spain, where she studied at Academia de Bellas Artes in Granada and Seville until 1978. In 1979 she moved to Switzerland, where she stayed for four years. Her first solo exhibition in a public institution took place in 1983 at the Bonn Kunsverein, in Bonn, Germany. In the following years, Ikemura had several solo exhibitions in galleries and public institutions, such as the Museum für Gegenwartskunst, in Basel (1987), and in the Japanese pavilion in the Melbourne International Biennale (1999). In 1985, she moved to Cologne. Her interest in working in sculpture began in 1987. In the 1990's, the female figure crystallized as the main focus of her work. ... In 1991, Ikemura became a professor on painting at the Universität der Künste (University of Fine Arts) in Berlin. Leiko Ikemura lives and works in Berlin and Cologne. Trees and faces, are both key subjects of Leiko Ikemura's work. They are the starting point of her artistic statement. We could also consider them as metaphoric symbols of human fragility. By using almost transparent materials (very diluted paint and varnish) she stresses on the sense of incorporeal. The constant use of the red color, considered by the artist as the representation of life and passion (the creative passion and its opposite) accentuates the allegorical nature of the forms, present in her drawings and paintings. Leiko Ikemura's faces, with minimized traits, transmit vulnerability and helplessness. The limits between the real and the spiritual world blurr until they disappear, leaving behind some connotations of a cultural and territorial loss. Far from a conceptual and rational approach, Leiko Ikemura's work claims for sensitiveness as a fundamental way of human communication. The exhibition will run until the end of November, and holds twenty original and recent works in different media including tempera on canvas, pastel on paper, inkjet prints, bronze sculptures and a suite of eight etchings edited by Poligrafa Obra Gràfica in 2012.