Patricia Gadea began her Fine Arts studies in 1979, when she made several journeys abroad -Paris and Amsterdam- and made her first public appearance in a group exhibition, "Comida homenaje ofrecida a Napoleón". From June 1989 to 1995 she was a member of the Estrujenbank group, which also included the painter Juan Ugalde, the poet Dionisio Cañas and Mariano Lozano. In 1992 the members published a book entitled Los tigres se perfuman con dinamita, a collection of their texts in which they set out their stances and ideas about power, the monarchy, progress, the Franco dictatorship, the cultural order, reason, illiteracy, science fiction, chance, AIDS, etc. Gadea's painting, which in the early days depended on figuration in the Luis Gordillo style, appropriates the icons of popular culture -especially the ones from American cartoons and Spanish comic books-, mingles them with a variety of images and sinks them in a background of paint, or superimposes them on prepainted canvases.