Irene López de Castro

Irene Lopez de Castro. Graduated in 1991 in Fine Arts at the Complutense University of Madrid. Her inspiration springs from the Sahel and the curve of the Niger River. Mali has marked her personal and professional evolution since her first trip in 1989. A painter with international success, her works have been exhibited in cities such as Rome, Paris, Biarritz, Madrid, Barcelona, Florence, Venice, Milan, Verona, Syracuse, London, Bamako and Seoul. Since 2002 she has been represented in Italy by the Casa D´Arte San Lorenzo, making several important solo exhibitions and catalogues. She has also participated in important institutional cultural projects: In 2017 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain organized a wonderful individual show, intitled Au Coeur du Mali at the Musée National du Mali that travelled to Florence under the name Il cuore del Mali. Her work on Timbuktu and the women of the Sahel has been exhibited in 2023 at the Sala Dalí in Piazza Navona by the Instituto Cervantes di Roma and the Ministry of Culture of Mali in the exhibit intitled Donne del Sahel. Before that this work was also exhibited at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Córdoba (2019), at the Reial Cercle Artistic in Barcelona (2020) and at Casa Árabe in Madrid (2021). Her autobiographical book has recently been published, which collects the story of her travels and her artistic path, Memories of the Niger River, the Dream of Timbuktu. (Amazon.com, translated by Sheila J. Baugh).