Claudio Villafañe (b. 1989, Córdoba, Argentina) is a London-based painter. His work draws on childhood memory and working-class life in Córdoba, returning to psychological states shaped by protection, exposure, and confrontation.

He works primarily in oils and often combines acrylic and oil in the same painting, using the shifts between surfaces to build light and depth. He paints mostly on cotton duck canvas for its resistance and texture, and regularly works across different scales, including smaller pieces on paper and plywood. He builds his own stretchers and frames, keeping the work physically grounded through a connection to his carpentry and construction background.

Villafañe has exhibited in the UK and internationally, including Tomorrowland’s Remember The Name (Belgium, 2023). His work is held in public and private collections. He lives and works in London.

Artist Statement

My work returns again and again to a presence. Sometimes it is a boy with curly hair, brown skin, and wide eyes. Sometimes it is only a fragment, a slingshot, a pair of legs, a hand suspended in space. The figure shifts, the feeling remains.

Through these forms I revisit memories that are not always clear in detail, but strong in sensation.

In earlier phases I focused on movement, on feet, on migration as something external, almost geographical. Over time the work turned inward. The distance became psychological. I realised I was not painting where I had been. I was painting what stayed in me.

These children carry something of working class Córdoba. They know how to navigate space. They learn early how to read situations, how to protect themselves without fully knowing that they are doing it. Childhood, for me, was not soft. It was alert. Play and survival often sat next to each other.

Córdoba is still present, but not as a literal landscape. It appears in high or slightly tilted horizons, in charged skies, in atmospheres that feel remembered rather than described. The ground is often unstable. Bodies lean, float, or suspend. I am drawn to that tension, the space between protection and exposure, innocence and confrontation.

Material is part of how I think. I work mostly on cotton duck canvas because I like its resistance and texture. It allows me to work at scale without hesitation. The material is not precious, so I do not treat it that way. That freedom matters. Sometimes I begin with acrylic and return with oil, letting the different surfaces shift light and depth. I also work on plywood and paper, often in smaller formats. Building my own stretchers and framing my work keeps me close to my carpentry background. Structure matters.

In the paintings I am interested in the play between flatness and raw brushwork. Some areas stay quiet, others move. At times a slight gloss interrupts a matte surface. When I apply paint over previous layers, I do not try to perfectly resolve what came before. I leave parts visible, not by carefully revealing them, but by allowing instinct and learned hand movements to decide what remains. I trust the gesture more than the correction.

These figures are personal, but they are not only about me. They hold something collective, about class, resilience, and the quiet ways an environment shapes a child long before he understands it.