Gaiska Torrealba designs Friends Edition 2026

The Friends of M HKA release an artwork each year exclusively for their members. This year, it is by the Venezuelan-Hungarian painter Gaiska Torrealba, who lives and works in Antwerp. The edition is accompanied by a small presentation of his work on the 6th floor of M HKA.

With this annual edition, the Friends support the development of an artistic practice while also strengthening the bond between art and the public.

Gaiska Torrealba: painting as a dream world

In Torrealba’s work, the human figure takes centre stage. His paintings often depict distressed children, searching young people, or hopeful men and women. The atmosphere is magical-realist: recognisable and at the same time unsettling.

Torrealba deliberately leaves the ambiguity of his images open. As a viewer, you are invited to form your own meaning, somewhere between memory and imagination.

Images from a personal archive

Torrealba often works from historical illustrations. He collects old magazines and books, and uses those images as a starting point for building new figures and scenes.

With bizarre distortions, sharp accents of light and unexpected planes of colour, he draws you into intimate, unreal atmospheres. His paintings seem to unfold in a dream: fragile, strange, and at the same time full of confidence. It is a world in which hope is not naïve, but persistent.

On view at M HKA

The presentation on the 6th floor at M HKA offers an insight into Torrealba’s recent work and connects with the edition realised by the Friends this year. It is a moment of encounter: with the artist, with the work, and with the commitment that makes this edition possible.