Irene López León paints the shop shutters of Ciutat Vella

Irene López León paints the shop shutters of Ciutat Vella for the Persianes que fan barri project.

Irene López León (L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, 1984) is a self-taught painter and muralist. She discovered mural painting by chance, while working as a bricklayer on the construction of a hostel in Kuala Lumpur, where she decided to “swap the roller for the brush”. Her work blends figuration and abstraction in a play of vibrant colour and, on the street, it works as a tribute to nature: tiny flowers and insects painted on a huge scale.

The artist signs 10 shop shutters in the Raval and the Gothic Quarter, in the Ciutat Vella district, as part of Persianes que fan barri: a street art intervention on 185 shops across Barcelona, organised by the Barcelona Creativity & Design Foundation with creative direction by Rebobinart.

Get to know the artist in our interview with Irene López León.

Irene López’s style: the objects that tell a neighbourhood’s story

The Ciutat Vella series starts from a simple idea: each shop is summed up in one object, and Irene López paints it large in the middle of the shutter. At Forn Boix, a round loaf with ears of wheat; at Calçats Queisalós, a trainer; at Farmàcia Mas Docampo, an antique apothecary jar among leaves; at Bodega La Masia, a barrel pouring wine. At Espai R and XXL Hardwear the star is a cat: one peeking out of a circle and another dressed as a sailor, with cap, anchor and chain. At Arkham Comics, the shutter becomes a stage with red curtains for a comic-book character.

What ties the series together is colour. The objects are painted in a range of blues and violets, with volume and highlights, and they stand out against the black of the shutter or against backgrounds of blots and stripes. The accents are few and well chosen: the red of the wine, the green of the leaves, the yellow of the wheat, the orange swirling around the trainer. From one shop to the next, the blue makes the series read as a single piece spread across the streets of Ciutat Vella.

The gallery will grow with the photographs of La Principal, Granja Viader and Soho Studio.