Catherine, 2024

Alica García San Gabino  

Alicia García San Gabino was born in Castellón in 1969. She holds a degree in fashion from the Polytechnic University of Madrid and a PhD candidate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid.

In 1994, she received an international award in Bilbao for the presentation of a collection based on recycling. This idea was quite pioneering at the time.

After this experience, she spent a year in the United States, in New York, and studied art at The School of Visual Arts, taking courses in illustration, photography, and graphic design.

Back in Spain in 1995, she began working in advertising agencies as an illustrator and art director. In 2003, she founded a non-profit association that works with textile workshops in developing countries, contributing design and marketing to their artisanal wealth to focus their production on market needs and developing ethical and sustainable work dynamics.

Design for Development Association: disenoparaeldesarrollo.org

At that time, she embarked on a pioneering path in the textile industry, seeking sustainability both in the creative processes and in the humane treatment of workers. With this work, which now encompasses 15 years of experience, she has established herself as a leading professional in the field of textile sustainability.

In 2015, she graduated in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, which marked the beginning of an alternative path in her artistic creation. Since then, she has dedicated her efforts to applying her knowledge of sustainability to art, a line of work and research that she continues to develop today.

Her artistic production has focused on eco-sustainable principles. She uses natural media and artisanal techniques such as encaustic, which employs beeswax and natural pine resins, along with organic pigments. However, her process goes further: the canvas is not limited to adhering to a wooden support, but covers volumes created with Fallas cardboard, creating a kind of "tailor-made suit" for these emerging forms, where her mastery of textile pattern making takes on special relevance. Based on her patterns, she transfers the pieces to the canvas and adapts them to the volumes, dressing them in cotton fabrics and then working waxed textures onto them. Her technique is a dialogue with nature, and her themes explore a feminine essence immersed in textured landscapes, where bodies merge with the folds of the fabrics. The result is works that oscillate between the abstract and the figurative, creating a unique visual language. She has exhibited in Aranjuez, Perales de Tajuña, Castellón, Marbella, Rivas, and Madrid.