Javi Calleja: "I don't paint what sells, I sell what I paint."

Javi Calleja was in his neighborhood, in his city, surrounded by people who admire him, including local neighbors. So much so that one of them, during the Q&A session, participated: "I often see you at the deli where you shop," she pointed out before confessing her admiration for the artist's "loyalty." Indeed, behind Calleja's well-known and recognized artistic universe, there is a man from Málaga who, as a young man in '83, went to Barcelona to pursue his first passion, gymnastics; a man who went to Granada to study Fine Arts; and a man who stayed in Málaga to project his work from the peak of international success with multimillion-dollar figures. But nothing overwhelms him: "Success is not worrying about success."

That's why this meeting had to happen. Javi Calleja's visit to the 'Málaga, round trip' series organized by the La Malagueta Cultural Center in collaboration with the Aula de Cultura de SUR. There, he sat with the co-director of the Aula and editor-in-chief of this newspaper, Alberto Gómez, for a talk that was filled with laughter and irony, but also a clear message about the market, the trajectory of his career, and all the lights and shadows of the sector. "They say no one is a prophet in their own land... Well, I am. I have felt loved long before everything went well for me," he asserted.

His exhibitions sell out before they open, and collectors from around the world are on waiting lists to own one of his works. "One thing is what you want to paint and another is the market; the market is not art. I don't paint what sells, I sell what I paint and if you're thinking about what you sell, you'll never sell what you paint," the artist from Málaga pointed out in a kind of tongue-twister full of meaning.

Regarding the question of reinventing oneself: "I don't think it's necessary. I used to try to do different things and ended up doing the same, now I want to do the same and end up doing different things," Calleja confessed, making clear his view of universities and the unrealistic vision they offer. "Something has happened, but how can you want to finish studying and start with the museum, when that should be the last thing to come? You can't think that right out of university you're going to get into MoMA," he reflected.

And, speaking of museums, he confessed that what he likes most about them are "the benches." And he explained: "I get bored reading the labels next to the paintings, I like to walk through museums as if I were walking down the street and stop when there is a work that prompts me to do so. And then I continue to enjoy the stroll." He was very ironic during the meeting. But he also got emotional. When talking about what his father taught him – who passed away when he was a teenager – he couldn't help it: "From my father, I learned to follow my passions," he said before taking a slight pause. "From my mother, I still have her." Another special moment were the words from his friends Topacio, Lluvia Rojo, and Alaska. "I don't consider myself intelligent, but I know how to surround myself with intelligent people," he commented after watching the videos projected of them.

He recalled an exhibition in Hong Kong in 2017, a turning point in his career. "We realized that the paintings were sold before they were even hung. And within a week I had about 200 orders. I knew a big wave was coming and it was bigger than I thought," he confessed. And then "the headaches" with the million-dollar prices and auctions: "I sold a painting for 15,000 euros and then it was auctioned for a million and a half. It's scary. People buy like that on the secondary market, but they don't buy from you."

Before ending his session at La Malagueta and meeting his followers, whom he drew improvised characters for – some on the historic cover of SUR that he himself made on March 3, 2023 – he gave advice to Charlie, a 13-year-old drawing enthusiast who asked him for a recommendation: "Don't be ashamed of things. Shame is the mask of guilt and guilt is the mask of responsibility. What you have to do is deny what everyone says, starting with your mother (laughs). There will come a time when you have to think about what you want and for that, you have to deny everything before. It's going to be messy, but there will come a time when you're not ashamed of what you do," he explained to Charlie, prompting applause from the audience and closing his session at La Malagueta.