Rushing Bull Study

This painting is in excellent condition and has only been shown in a gallery setting.  The canvas measures 21x31 inches, 25x35 inches framed. 

Miguel Acevedo was born in 1947.  He is the third of eight brothers and sisters and grew up in the countryside near Cordoba (Spain), where his father worked as a warden on a country estate.  He attended state school there, and from an early age, his only true interest in school was drawing.  At age 12 he entered an outdoor painting competition where his entry consisted of a colored pencil drawing on paper.  The other participants were older than Acevedo and were equipped with canvases, easels and tubes of oil paint, which Acevedo had never seen before.  That afternoon, after finishing his drawing entry, his father took him to his first bullfight where his passion of both bullfighting and art were united.  The following day the headmaster at the school called Acevedo to his office and told him he had won first prize in the competition with his drawing.

At art school Acevedo learned quickly and his talents progressed allowing him to complete the four-year course in two years at the young age of 14.  Acevedo’s drawing skills had advanced enough for him to begin experimenting with oil paints. 

 When he was 16, he joined the staff of a painting workshop.  Knowing his passion for bullfighting as well as painting, the owner of the workshop assisted him in his desire to be a bullfighter.  Acevedo recognized the difficulties and expenses to become a bullfighter and decided to dedicate himself completely to painting.

 In 1971 he left the workshop and set up his own studio where he learned, from friends, of a movement of painters in the north of Spain.  There he discovered new landscapes in which to paint and soon sold seven of his paintings to the owner of a prominent gallery in Gijon who offered to continue to purchase Acevedo’s paintings if he would move to and work out of the village there.  He returned to Cordoba and told his girlfriend of his new opportunity in Gijon.  He promised her that he would come back and marry her once he was established.  One year later, Acevedo returned and they were married.  They then moved to Gijon.  Soon his work began to be discovered by other galleries in Spain and he began holding exhibitions in various important galleries.  Being somewhat shy, he prefers to not attend his own exhibitions, but leave the presentation to the gallery.

 In 1977 the Walt Disney Corporation recruited him in order to teach their artists how to capture natural light.  Acevedo states that, when looking at a painting, he expects to find good draftsmanship, composition and freshness.  He respects abstract art, but does not feel it and states that “you can not paint if you do not know how to draw.  Drawing is the skeleton.  Drawing is everything.”