IGNASI
MONREAL
Artist
ISSUE 4 2026 SS
Ignasi Monreal isn’t on Instagram.
Or at least not when he can help it. The 35-year-old Spanish artist, whose paintings possess an innately shareable virality, is currently on a social media detox. But for an artist in 2026, the app is never too far away: one of his most recent posts was of his gold-painted dome house in Madrid that he did in collaboration with the architect Guillermo Santoma. It made the cover of Architectural Digest, so naturally it needed to go on the grid. He posted it and turned off his phone.
“Ever since I deleted Instagram, my whole world has become way smaller, but in comparison, enormous,” he says. “I feel so happy when I don’t look at my phone.” The intoxicating feeling of likes and follows cascading over the screen is something he’s working on distancing himself from. “You only realize who you are truly when you remove your addictions, and social media was very much one of mine.”
Monreal doesn’t make a habit of buying houses to paint their interiors gold, however. The work that decorates his semi-dormant Instagram account is testament to his range. There are paintings of voyeurism in the era of gay dating apps: a male torso with washboard abs receiving oral sex, painted on the screen of a real camcorder; a nude male selfie on the screen of a MacBook. Often, there’s an element of cheekiness: a pristine bare bum extinguishing a candle with a gust of wind. Others depict the sky: a cloud roaring with flame, suspended over a valley; the dome of a basilica launching into the air like a rocket. All of it, from the pornographic to the surreal, to the half-finished dinner plates, has the ecclesiastical touch and tenderness of an old master.
Born in Barcelona in 1990, Monreal has been drawing for as long as his hands could hold a crayon. “I have no proof, but my mother says that when I was two I was drawing the [1992 Barcelona] Olympics mascot Cobi.” (An orange sheepdog character designed by Javier Mariscal—“one of the great Catalan illustrators”). Classically trained in painting and drawing, it was only when other people noticed that Monreal’s work that he began to think he had a real talent. “I never took that side of me seriously enough. I didn’t respect it enough, I thought it was a silly hobby that I’ve done since I was a kid,” he said. “The world did before I did, and I was like oh, maybe I should do something about this.”
We meet at Epazabu, the artist residence just south of Roppongi where Monreal has been working at the tail end of 2025. Verdant evergreen trees are visible through the large windows, which bathe the quiet, spacious rooms of the complex in soft daylight. It’s a peaceful place where Monreal can experiment uninterrupted.
As part of the residency, he has contributed two giant roll-down murals: a cascading curtain of pink and green in the kitchen, and a portrait of Happy, a gigantic fluffy white Akita that calls Epazabu home. The immediately iconic Plats Bruts (dirty dishes), a series of paintings of half-eaten meals and sauce-slicked crockery, are also on display.
Then there’s the works in progress. On one table is a collection of sketchbooks: one depicts a painting of close-up of Monreal’s own teeth; on another is a manga-style triptych of abyssal craters, the word ‘Silencio’ above them. Also scattered around the table are a few tiny statuettes of Monreal that he had 3D printed in Tokyo: his pushed-back chestnut hair, Roman nose, and outfit of black sportswear compacted into a tiny army of plastic replicas in various poses.
“Every time I come to Japan, it resets my creative interests, or solidifies them. It opens new windows to get fresh air,” he says. His love for Japan began with television. Growing up in Barcelona, he would watch the renowned anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which introduced him to a whole new world of expression. “Weirdly enough, somebody in Catalan national TV thought that it was a very good idea to license a lot of anime in the 90s,” he says. “But I don’t think they watched it before to see if it was okay for kids, so there was just Evangelion playing in the afternoon.”
After a spell working as an assistant art director in London, Monreal’s big break came with an email from Gucci. Creating surrealist work for the Italian house for their Spring Summer 2018 campaign, he painted surrealist frescoes featuring landscapes of characters dressed in then-creative director Alessandro Michele’s baroque designs. With fantastical scenery that fused flavours from Studio Ghibli, contemporary fashion, and Greek and Roman mythology, it was Monreal’s first big commission, and digitally catapulted him to success.
More flush-cash commissions and ramped up recognition on social media soon followed. From the outside the momentum looked like success. Plus, he was making money—he was making brands money—but something wasn’t connecting. “I was very unhappy, I felt like a printer,” he says. “It was at a stage of my life where I was really just experimenting and I got stuck there for many years. And success is addictive. Fame is addictive, validation is addictive. And what it does is it gives you new addictions just to keep that dopamine level up.”
Almost a decade later, with some darker days that he hints at behind him, Monreal is more grounded, and his hunger for success has shifted. “Obviously I care about validation, but I’m not looking for that level of fame,” he says. “What I want now is to build a sustainable workflow so that I can keep doing researching and exploring.” It’s been a process of building up a new value system that centres Monreal’s craft and talent. “Clients can buy the eggs, but I’m the chicken,” he grins.
The emptiness that came with his early commercial success has led Monreal to ask some deeper questions of himself. “For last two or three years I was asking myself, what would I paint if nobody was looking? And I didn’t know.” One solution came in paintings of black holes—those aforementioned ‘Silencio’ sketches. “I looked at my sketchbook and these holes kept appearing,” he says. “I realised I was interested in the void. All my career I’ve painted things or I was hired to paint things, and I was very preoccupied with representation of form, objects, people, stories, narrative. So instead I tried to paint nothing.”
This project culminated in a giant five-by-two-metre hole that he painted in Italy last year: the result is a shadowy, gaping crater so huge it seems to swallow the room in with it. “For the first time I wasn’t trying to paint something particular, I was trying to paint a feeling,” he says. “The last ten years of my career has been very focused on being displayed on social media like it’s thought for a screen. And so I wanted to paint silence, and that’s what came out.”
Without the endless appetite from the audience—especially the one online—what lies on the other side of that black hole? To find out, he plans to keep thinking about what he’ll paint when nobody is watching. “I don’t think I will have one answer,” he says. “But it’s a question I need to keep asking myself.”
Questionnaire
1
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What do you do?
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I paint, mostly.
2
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What do you love most about your job?
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Creating something better than what I had in mind.
3
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What made you start your current job?
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It was always meant to be.
4
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Who are the most influential persons in your life?
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My friends.
5
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Describe yourself in 3 words
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Me, myself and I.
6
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What makes you feel good?
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Creating something better than what I had in mind.
7
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What are you most interested in right now?
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Temperature and gravity.
8
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What are three things you cannot live without?
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Air, water and food.
9
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What do you never leave the house without?
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My shoes.
10
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Tell us about your morning routine.
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I write, I eat breakfast and I workout.
11
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When does inspiration come to you?
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When I’m receptive.
12
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What do you get immersed in, causing you to lose track of time?
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Painting.
13
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What is the ultimate luxury for you?
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Fresh cut fruit served for breakfast.
14
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When do you tend to feel cravings, and what are they for?
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I get fried chicken fever when I pass in front of FamilyMart.
15
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What is your favorite color?
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I haven’t decided yet.
16
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How do you face adversity when it arises?
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One step at a time.
17
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What is the most important decision you have made in your life?
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To follow my instincts.
18
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What was the most moving moment in your life?
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Recently, watching the sunrise at Mount Fuji.
19
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Which of the five senses most strongly stimulates your desires?
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Vision.
20
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Who is your favorite author?
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I’m really enjoying Marguerite Yourcenar lately.
21
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What are your three favorite books on your bookshelf?
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I also enjoyed Children of the Sea by Daisuke Igarashi.
22
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Where would you like to go on a trip right now?
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I’m about to board a plane back to Spain now.
23
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What’s a moment that moved you recently?
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My dreams.
24
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What is the most memorable place you’ve visited?
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Japan.
25
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Is there something you've loved doing and have kept doing since your childhood?
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Breathing.
26
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What music have you been into recently?
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I’ve been enjoying silence.
27
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Who’s your favorite singer?
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Rosalía
28
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What is the one thing that you cannot compromise on?
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I don’t eat squid or octopus.
29
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What are your three favorite movies?
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Any Ghibli film will do.
30
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What are your three favorite foods?
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Soup, tomatoes and Spanish ham.
31
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When you meet someone for the first time, what’s the first thing that catches your eye?
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Their hair.
32
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What aroma or smell is most memorable to you?
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Baked goods.
33
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What’s the best advice you’ve ever received from others?
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To make my bed every morning.
34
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What do you wear in bed?
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That’s between me and my sheets.
35
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What are your most important values?
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Manners and respect.
