He attributes the time spent with Sigala as
a vital part of his progression as an artist.

Before moving to Spain in 1986, Abalo Abalo participated in two exhibitions in Caracas. The first was called More Than One Hundred, and the second was named, A Week in Caracas. Both were well received.In Spain he began displaying his work both indi-vidually and collectively in the cities of Vigo, La Coruña, Barcelona, and Madrid. He also worked for five years as a photojournalist for the newspaper, La Voz de Galicia.

More recently, Abalo Abalo has devoted himself to exposing some of his earlier work in a book called Our Earth. In 2006, he presented photographs taken of the Prestige oil tanker disaster and the volunteers dedicated to its clean-up in Buenos Aires. In 2009, he released his latest book called, Vigo-Cangas Cangas-Vigo. The photog-raphs focus on passenger vessels on the Vigo River in Galicia, Spain. His photo book LUCHADORES is an artistic exploration of South American professional wrestling. Abalo Abalo lives in Spain.

    (go back)

Social Publishing

Connecting the artist with the audience     

JOSÉ LUÍS ABALO ABALO

José Luís Abalo Abalo was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1959. Both of his parents are from Spain and as
a youth he traveled to the country often. As a result of these trips he developed a strong connection with Spanish customs and culture, a bond that would later reveal itself in his photography. He completed an undergraduate degree at Bolívar and Garibaldi College in Venezuela and then began a graduate engineering program. It was at this juncture in Abalo Abalo’s life that he was introduced to photography and quickly realized it was his passion.

Abalo Abalo dropped out of the engineering program and enrolled at the Design Institute in Caracas where he studied under the famed photographer, José Sigala. His experience with Sigala and the rest of the professors at the institute emboldened a passion he would pursue the rest of his life. Having worked extensively in America, Sigala identified parallels between Abalo Abalo’s work and American photographers like Gary Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Frank. In these early days of his photography, Sigala was a mentor to Abalo Abalo.