We recently connected with Alejandro Lopart and have shared our conversation below.
Alejandro, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
It began, I suppose, when I was a teenager. Poetry was my refuge then, alongside music. I remember those days well, the hours that stretched on, spent in the company of musicians, poets, writers, and artists. I was searching for a language back then, the language of an artist. I went to college and studied German literature, studied music too, and found myself part of a group in the late ’90s called The Telluric Society. In Mexico City, I held countless poetry readings, trying to find my voice as a musician. I had a jazz band once. We improvised, inside the music and out of it, like it was a discipline, a way of life that merged with writing. My days were filled with music, films, and books, as though I couldn’t consume enough to satisfy whatever hunger burned inside me. That’s where the real learning happened, not just in classrooms, but everywhere else, too.
But something stirred in me, a need to push further, and I turned to architecture. There, I learned to draw, to paint, to see the world through lines and forms. I found myself in the workshop of Gilberto Aceves Navarro, a man who had known Siqueiros, and while I studied the clean, straight lines of architecture, I learned to break them in his studio. My twenties were spent on the move, restless, chasing knowledge. I lived for a year between Toledo and Vienna, another between London and Barcelona, where I chose architecture. And later, I found myself in Minneapolis, working at the Walker Art Center.
In New York, on a trip, I met someone, a woman who changed everything. She moved with me, and for a time, she was the force that pushed me, inspired me. But she was taken from me too soon, at 28, by cancer. I held her in my arms as she left, and something inside me broke. The travels, the stories, the books—all of it meant nothing after that. But from that loss, something else grew. Compassion became my compass. I began to paint, but it wasn’t about me anymore. It wasn’t about the things I had once believed. The pain and suffering I had endured transformed into something deeper, something outside of myself. My work became a message, or perhaps more of a feeling—a sense of something greater than all of us. I became a messenger, a vessel for something far beyond me. And in that surrender, something beautiful emerged.
Alejandro, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I sold my first painting in my early twenties. It went to a friend of mine, someone who had always admired my work. She said it would look good in her living room, and that was that. From there, I started branching out, finding other ways to create. It wasn’t long before I moved from painting to designing houses, then building them. I was a poet, but I designed buildings. I painted, and I played the drums too. I’ve always felt this pull to approach my work like the old masters did, with a kind of Renaissance spirit, where no craft stands alone. Even now, I feel that need, the drive to explore each project from many angles, to merge one discipline with another.In today’s world, specialization is king. Academia pushes it, encourages it. But where I stand, I believe in the opposite. I work across different crafts, letting one art form bleed into another, finding new ways to express and create. It’s those symbiotic relationships between disciplines that ground my work, that give my projects their legs. One thing informs the next, and from that, something new is always born.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In 2001, I found myself drifting through Europe, landing in London after a stint in Paris. By the time I got there, I was broke. I ended up staying with some friends on the steps of a theater near Victoria Station. It was late September, and the weather had already turned. I spent a month like that, scraping by, looking for a place to live, searching for any work I could find. I became a barista, a waiter, cleaned toilets, and worked behind the bar. It was humbling, but it shaped me. You learn, when you hit the ground, that it doesn’t go any deeper than that. All you can do is acknowledge where you’ve landed, take it as a lesson, and get back on your feet. Life teaches you like that, through the hard knocks, making you stronger, more resilient.
Twenty years later, I was back in London, but this time it was a different story. It was 2018, and I found myself at the Baftas, celebrating with Gary Oldman and Douglas Urbanski after Gary won Best Actor. The conversations I had then were about craft, about language, about the talents we’re given by something greater than ourselves. Life had changed, but the lessons stayed with me, shaping who I had become.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
As an artist, my goal is simple: to help people look deeper, to uncover what lies beneath the surface of who we think we are. I want to create a path that leads to a higher understanding, a way for us to see ourselves more clearly. Through the contemplation of ideas and how they take shape, I hope to hold up a mirror, one that reflects back the truths we often miss. It’s about giving form to the fleeting, the intangible—making something solid out of the questions that define us as human. In that, I seek to capture the essence of what it means to be alive.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://alejandrolopart.com
- Instagram: @alejandrolopart
- Facebook: Alejandro Lopart
Image Credits
photos 2, 4, 5, 6 Avril del Pino
Photo 8 Paula Caputo