The artist Raquel van Halen was born on August 7, 1991 in Cadiz, Spain. From a very young age she was clear that her passion in life was to draw and paint. She studied the Bachelor of Art and in 2010, at the age of 17, she participated in her first collective exhibition “Imago Mutis” at Colegio de Arquitectos de Cádiz. Then, she studied Fine Arts at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, where she combined her studies with classical ballet at Conservatorio de Carmen Roche. In 2012 Raquel won the first painting prize of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with her painting “La Vie en Rouge”.
Given the creativity and versatility of the artist, in 2015, she specialized in Editorial Illustration from the ESDIP school in Madrid and published her first illustrated story, entitled “Will y la Conejita Rosa”, with Babidi-bu publishing house (Seville). In 2017 she opened in Tours (France) her first solo exhibition of watercolors with the title “Instantes de Color”, which was also exhibited at La Casa de la Juventud in her hometown the following year. That same year she also participated in the collective exhibition “Mujeres”, which took place in Jaén, Spain, while she was finishing the Master in Graphic Design at the CEI in Seville.
In 2019, while studying the Master of Teaching at Universidad Complutense de Madrid, she published the article “La belleza en el arte digital” in the e-inov@ magazine. The following year, after the break caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Raquel created the collection "Windows to the sea", with the aim of bringing the viewer the feeling of freedom so necessary in these hard times. Her artwork “Sabor de luz y de sal” was finalist in the XX Painting Contest “Fundación Sierra Elvira” from Universidad de Granada in Atarfe, Spain.
In this year 2022, her latest collection “Suresencia” is born, which undoubtedly marks a before and after in her professional career, where she completes an agenda full of exhibitions for the two collections mentioned above, among which it is worth to highlight the individual exhibition “Suresencia” at Galería Bretón Artespacio, Jerez de la Frontera (Cadiz); the exhibition “Colectiva Contemporánea” at Galería Abartium, Barcelona; the virtual exhibition "Adrenocromo for dinner" at M.A.D.S. Art Gallery, Milan, Italy; the individual exhibition “Ventanas al mar” at Palacio de Congresos de la Real Isla de San Fernando, Cádiz; the international collective exhibition “Brain Cake” of M.A.D.S. Gallery at La Pedrera - Casa Milà, Barcelona and the Art Fair “Art Week Miami 2022” at Miami, Florida.
Raquel van Halen’s work will travel inside and outside Spain in 2023, and will be at the International Contemporary Art Fair in Brussels, Belgium.
Raquel van Halen shows her versatility and creative capacity through her art. The artist follows several lines of research closely related to each other, such as nature, landscapes, the sea, the earth’s crust or the horizon. She mainly uses acrylic paint in her compositions, for its ease of adding textures, but, sometimes, she uses oil paint. Raquel is a painter who expresses with confidence and ease the beauty of the environment that surrounds her, creating collections full of color and contrast.