"Nature, childhood, art history… those are the main references in my work... but ethicalpolitical nuances also play into it.

“Schmutziger Schnee” uses irony to take up the fight against intolerance. My imagination is populated by living and dissected animals, landscapes and children, and is currently being enriched with some portraits of my influences from art history and literature. With great reverence and joy, I have painted Grosz, Beckmann, Otto Dix, Thomas Mann and some other people as a love letter to art, but also full of sorrow for the great flaw in the society of that time: non-resistance. Bergman in "The Serpent's Egg" and Haneke's in "The White Ribbon" illustrate very well how close hell is to paradise. Bergman shows how society in Berlin of the 20s began to darken to an eternal winter. Haneke takes us back a further generation and analyzes the society that brought forth the incomprehensible. This society of "good thinking" in the 19th Century gives me a number sweet motifs full of idyllic images, landscapes, poems about love and hate, an Arcadian orgy. For inspiration, I have taken books on poetry and love from the 19th century and "polluted" or "enriched" them: a beautiful package for "noble" content. The same happens to the frames, which are the cradle or the loudspeaker of dirty and blessed painting. The overstraining of paradise and the metaphor of untouched, fresh-fallen snow – that infinite and antiquated white – lend this exhibition its title."
Santiago Ydañez. Berlin 07.05.2013

Santiago Ydañez was born in Jaén, 1967. Lives and works in Berlín and Granada (Spain). Graduated in Painting from the School of Arts of Universidad of Granada, Ydañez is one of the most internationally recognized spanish artists of his generation. Santiago Ydañez was awarded the Premio de Pintura ABC in 2002, Premio de Pintura Generación 2002 - Caja Madrid, Beca del Colegio de España in París - Ministerio de Cultura in 2001 and the Beca de la Fundación Marcelino Botín in 1998. Ydañez work is represented in several Institutional Art collections such as: Fundación Botín (Santander), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Museo Sofía Imber (Caracas, Venezuela), amongst others.He/s work is also represented in private  collections in Mexico, Canada, Italia, Noruega, Alemania, Portugal y España.