Claudio Villafañe (b. 1989, Córdoba, Argentina) is a London-based, self-taught painter. Working primarily in oils—often with oil sticks and dry pigments—on canvas (with selected works on plywood and paper), he builds layered, scraped surfaces where earlier decisions remain visible.

Shaped by early migrations and a working-class upbringing, his paintings attend to lives at the margins and to how memory, class, and movement mark a body, without illustration or slogan. Colour choices, influenced by colour blindness, favour contrast and clarity of form over naturalism. With a background in construction, he fabricates many of his own supports, bringing structural know-how and a sense of wear into the studio.

Villafañe has exhibited in the UK and internationally, including Tomorrowland’s Remember The Name (Belgium, 2023), a program spotlighting emerging artists and cross-disciplinary creativity. His work is held in public and private collections. He lives and works in London.

Artist Statement

I paint from the body outward, the weight in a step, the pause before moving on. Landscape is an accomplice rather than a backdrop: high horizons and serrated silhouettes carry the afterimage of Córdoba’s sierras without aiming at depiction. I moved across countries early and grew up close to poverty; that history keeps my attention on lives often overlooked and on the pressure between shelter and exposure. I work in oils, often with oil sticks and dry pigments, on canvas; surfaces are built, scraped back, and left partially open so revision stays legible. Because of colour blindness I choose contrast over harmony; edges are chosen, not polished away. The aim is a direct, material language that can hold movement, memory, and dignity without explaining it away.

A recent studio-focused period pared the images to essentials, fewer signs, more air. My current body of work, El cuerpo como paisaje, brings figure and landscape into a tighter conversation: the body as a kind of terrain, mountains and suns held close, flowers and rivers standing in for what is carried and what is left behind. I leave room for the work to breathe so meaning gathers over time. What I’m after is a painting that holds, long enough for someone to feel the distance between leaving and belonging.