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A blank wall, a biker helmet, or a basketball star’s shoes. Any surface is valid for Víctor Manuel Lozano, known as Lolo, to let your imagination run wild and turn the void of color into a new work of art. This man from Zaragoza, who lives in the Teruel municipality of Fuentes Claras, has turned his hobby into his way of life.
The germ of everything is in childhood. “Since I was a child they call me Lolo and since I was a child I have always been drawing, I have always been good at it”says Lozano, who admits that he was never a brilliant student. His little taste for exams did not prevent him from studying at university and graduating in History, which opened the way for his first job as a professional cartoonist: “I worked on the archaeological drawing, on the graphic representation of the materials from the excavations”. The 2008 crisis wiped out the budget for archaeological campaigns and Lozano traded the earth for computers, when he began studies of web page designs and worked in marketing.
This change helped him create the website Quepintoaqui.com, where he collects all his work. All the works that can be seen in this digital portfolio are made by a “completely self-taught” artist, since Lozano has never attended any class or course in plastic arts. The artist boasts of his work and points out that most are made with the technique of the airbrushing, because it is “my favorite and the one that allows me to paint with the precision I want”. An artist who has learned everything by himself and who only has the help of his wife, who “lends him a hand with the funds and the montage”. In the future, the cartoonist considers starting a career as a teacher, as an artist specialized in airbrushing, and trying to “discover some talent with which he can collaborate”.
His drawings are already known in Aragon, although Lozano defends that the greatest diffusion continues to be given “on the internet”, hence “My big bet was on the website, since the town gives you facilities to have a study but it takes away your visibility”. In the autonomous community you can already see some of its murals, like the one he did in Fuentes Claras with a message against gender violence or the one he is working on in Odón, in a confrontation between Saint George and the dragon. “It is an allegory of the peoples’ struggle against depopulation”, points out the artist.
The growth of his work and his exposure, especially on social networks, does not make him detach from Fuentes Claras, where he maintains his workplace: “I have been determined to undertake in my town and I am going to achieve it”. Lozano believes that the rural world has advantages over the city, “because you need a large place to have the paintings and a small workshop”, and shows that life is not so different in the smaller towns: “In the villages there are also people with concerns”. Lozano hopes that the situation will improve in a while and stop thinking about depopulation as the only issue around the municipalities, “because it is a horrible message and there are many good things in the towns.”
His murals, which he also does in private homes, are the ones that fill Lozano the most as a draftsman, because “they allow him to work with great freedom, without having to follow, normally, a very fixed scheme”. Something that does happen, for example, in the design of shoes or helmets, “where you have to do what the customer asks”. Lozano has also dared, for some time, to design tattoos: “It’s special because people are going to wear it on their skin and they get a totally unique design”.
After having decorated all imaginable surfaces, the artist from Zaragoza wants to take his art one step further: “I think that with recycling and decoration there is a new opportunity: instead of changing furniture, they can be painted and give them another life”. Lolo did not separate himself from pencils as a child and now he does not separate himself from the spray, looking for a wall, a pair of sneakers or a kitchen cupboard.
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