Miguel Viribay Abad

Miguel Viribay Abad is a Spanish painter, printmaker, teacher and art critic with Andalusian roots. He began his artistic training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Jaén and in 1959 entered the San Carlos School of Fine Arts in Valencia, where, on a university scholarship, he studied engraving and restoration and earned his teaching qualification in drawing in 1964-1965; there he was influenced by artists such as Genaro Lahuerta and Paco Lozano. In 1964 he received a grant to attend the International Residence of Painters at El Paular (Segovia), winning the Gold Medal among the participants. In 1966 he co-founded the "Grupo Jaén" of painters. He was invited to the art courses of the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Santander, where he taught continuously from 1972 to 1975, and until 1986 he co-founded and took part in the "San Andrés" engraving workshop in Jaén. In 1980 he became professor of drawing at the Huarte de San Juan Institute in Linares and in 1992 was named a full council member of the Instituto de Estudios Giennenses. He received the "Casa de Úbeda 2001" prize for his artistic career and his work spreading art, and in 2002 was elected a full member of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Granada (medal no. 14), delivering his entrance speech in 2003 on Manuel Ángeles Ortiz. From the mid-1980s he was an art critic for the newspapers Ideal and Diario Jaén. His subjects range from the olive landscapes of his province, which art historian Pedro Galera Andreu called Viribay's "fauvist landscape", to portraiture, social painting and, to a lesser extent, abstraction. His work is held in museums such as the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Jaén, the Museo Provincial de Ciudad Real, the Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes de Málaga, the Museo Camón Aznar in Zaragoza and the Museo de Managua.