'I've always liked street art. Urban art. It is an art that I see very free, just like when children create. And I have wanted to transform it to translate into my paintings.'
—Edgar PlansMy Little Monster Loves Balloons is exemplary of Edgar Plans’ typically expressive, lively, and childlike style that has gained the Spanish artist his flourishing international reputation. Plans’ cartoon figures, known as ‘Animal Heroes,’ are seemingly innocently at play, with their mouse-shaped ears, highlighted in bright colours and set within a graffiti inspired environment. These seemingly light-hearted illustrations are in fact a commentary on socio-political concerns grazing issues of racism, gender equality and climate change. He notes, ‘The Animal Heroes arise from my intention to create pictures of denunciation in favour of the environment, to denounce the human actions that contaminate, destroy and poke the planet. In turn these heroes have simple powers that today’s society is losing as they are solidarity, companionship, respect… and these animals through art and their actions want to reintroduce people.’ⁱ

'I have never wanted to draw what other people would suggest. I liked to draw comic strips, short stories, not still-lives of bowls of fruit, nor charcoal sketches of plaster classic figures.’ —Edgar PlansEchoing the Contemporary Faux Naïf movement, Plans attempts to reform art’s staid standards of beauty by reverting to considered primal or elementary beginnings. By creating works in this way, the artist is freed from convention. Plans combines these multiplicate influences and blends Street Art with children’s book illustrations, creating an aesthetic that is wholly his own– spirited and emotive. Drawing from art historical knowledge and childhood experiences, influences such as Paul Klee, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring shine through body of work. At the age of 15, Plans spent two years in the studio of the Spanish illustrator José María Ramos, where he explored painting and drawing. Whilst sharing similar aesthetic attributes, it is Ramos’ skill at storytelling and portraying an instant narrative which is absorbed in Plans’ works. The culmination of their styles are reflected in the present work where the back wall scribbles of multi-eyed monsters, little houses and the Animal Heroes encompass the expression of mischief, joy and play- all elements central to Edgar Plans’ most celebrated works.

Paul Klee, Castle and Sun, 1928, Private Collection. Image: Bridgeman Images

Collector's Digest

•   Edgar Plans is a Spanish artist represented by Almine Rech Gallery.

•   Receiving growing international popularity in recent years, Edgar Plans latest solo exhibition focused on his Animal Heroes characters, The Freedom to Dream and Want to Be, held at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in 2021.

•   He has held further solo exhibitions at Almine Rech, Paris (2021) and Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona (2019), along with exhibition pop-ups in Hong Kong at the K11 Musea (2021) and WAREHOUSE Gallery (2020).

•   His works are also in public collections such as the Caixa Foundation, Masaveu Foundation, Illuro Foundation, the Museum of Fine Arts of Asturias, Spain, and the Contemporary Art Museum La Habana, Cuba. Edgar Plans is represented by Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona and Padre Gallery, New York & Moscow.

ⁱ Edgar Plans, Edgar Plans, Gijón, March 2019, n.p.
- Provenance
  Alzueta Gallery, Barcelona
  Private Collection
  Acquired from the above by the present owner