Javier Baldeón completed his studies in Madrid, the city where he now lives and works. He began his artistic career as a painter in the first half of the 1980s while still a student, and in 1984 he had his first solo exhibition at Galería Fúcares in Almagro. In 1987–1989 he was awarded a grant to reside at Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. These years saw the maturation of his artistic language, which took as its point of departure the rejection of representation in painting; in series like ‘56 golpes’ he presented broken paintings in an effort to make the painting something real. In the late 1980s he began to introduce a distinctive form of representation in his pieces, using shadows with large glazed, light-filled planes in which recognisable forms can be discerned.