A Fine Arts graduate from the University of Granada, Ydáñez has given workshops along with Juán Genovés and Mitsuo Miura, among others. He has received important distinctions and is one of Spain’s most internationally renowned painters. He has been awarded scholarships by the Ministry of Culture’s Colegio de España in Paris (2001), the Marcelino Botín Foundation (1998), the Academia de España in Rome (2016) and the 33rd BMW Painting Prize (2018).

He has held exhibitions at the CAC (Málaga), Villa di Livia (Rome), Whitebox Art Center (Beijing), Museo Lázaro Galdiano (Madrid), Dillon Gallery (New York), CAAM (Gran Canaria), Invaliden1 (Berlin), Fundación Chirivella Soriano (Valencia), Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), Antigua Iglesia de la Compañía de Jesús (Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia), Gallery SE (Bergen, Norway), Goethe Institut, Instituto Cervantes (Stockholm), Fundación Canaria para el Desarrollo de la Pintura (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), GE Galería (Monterrey, Mexico), among others. His work is present in the collections of the Fundación Botín (Santander), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), DKV, CAC (Málaga), Museo Sofía Ímber (Venezuela), Diputación de Jaén, ABC (Madrid), CGAC (Santiago de Compostela).

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Sandra. Oil on canvas. 400 X 200 cm. 2018.

Ydáñez’s personal imaginary is informed by memories of his childhood, scenes of rural life and elements of the countryside it inhabits. Familiar, personal and everyday references which, over the years, the artist has connected with the History of Art and Humanity, while often concealing ethical and political messages. A painter of classical themes, his work is recognised for its expressiveness, which he achieves in quick work sessions where he captures the essential through broad, expressive and energetic brushstrokes and a limited palette of colours. Some of these features are found in Sandra, one of the pieces that Ydáñez created during his prolific residency at Ses12naus. A compulsive seeker of beauty in all that surrounds him, the artist interprets Sandra as a landscape that purposefully adopts monumental and vertical proportions, manifesting some of the changes in the paradigm of the contemporary image, namely, oversizing, the disappearance of traditional spatial axes, and the loss of the hegemony of the horizontal perspective.