I started painting when the world was a different place. My first works were signed Pardillo — my first surname, the one on my documents, the one that identifies me in the civil registry. For decades it was my artistic name. Under it I participated in exhibitions, handed pieces to my first collectors, and built what is today my visual language.
But in 2022 I made a decision I had been contemplating for a long time: to change my signature.
From Pardillo to Trujillo
It was not a marketing gesture. It was an act of gratitude.
Trujillo is my maternal grandfather's surname. He was born in La Gomera, Canary Islands, and like so many other Spaniards of his generation, he crossed the Atlantic in search of a better life. He emigrated to Cuba not knowing that, in doing so, he was planting something that would take decades to bloom: my story.
"50 Euros" — Solo exhibition, "Mi Isla", Havana, Cuba, 2014. Signed as Pardillo.
Thanks to Mr. Manuel Trujillo (my grandfather) I obtained my Spanish citizenship. Thanks to him, in 2014, I crossed the same ocean — but in the opposite direction. I came to live in Spain, the country where I now have my studio, where the light comes through the windows differently and where every canvas I finish feels like it belongs to something greater.
My grandfather crossed the sea to build his life. I crossed the same sea to build my work. Without knowing it, we both wrote together this story of resilience, effort, and transformation.
Signing Trujillo is a way of remembering him every time I put brush to canvas.
"100 Dollars" — Solo exhibition, "Mi Isla", Havana, Cuba, 2014. Signed as Pardillo.
My artistic vision from Cuba
Havana shaped me as an artist before I even knew that's what I was. The Havana Malecón, that eternal seawall against which the sea and dreams crash, was my first great canvas. The classic cars that travel its streets —time machines trapped in a perpetual present— taught me that movement can simultaneously be progress and nostalgia.
From that perspective came my most personal series. The currency —the 50 Euros, the 100 Dollars— is not just an economic symbol: it is the basis of exchange, the engine of the desire for a better life, the same impulse that drove my grandfather to cross the Atlantic and that later drove me.
And then there is transit. Wandering II and III speak of walking, of the movement of bodies through streets and cities. But that wandering is not innocent: it is emigration turned into everyday gesture, the displacement that runs in my family for generations and that was no stranger to me from a very young age. My characters walk because we have always walked. Toward another place. Toward something better. Toward oneself.
That journey —physical, emotional, artistic— is the invisible thread that ties all my works together, from Havana to Pontevedra, from Pardillo to Trujillo.
The process hasn't changed. The signature has.
Thirty years of work have taught me that the creative process is not linear. There are stages of exploration, crisis, and discovery. I have gone through realism, urban figuration, pure abstraction. I have painted cities, tides, light. I have always sought the same thing: for the work to say what words cannot.
What has changed is the awareness with which I sign. Every piece that leaves my studio bearing the name Trujillo carries with it a story of roots, gratitude, and belonging.
Transit Series — Wandering II. Current work signed as Trujillo.
Transit Series — Wandering III. Current work signed as Trujillo.
Do you own a work signed as Pardillo?
If you have one of my works from that period, you have the beginning of this story. Those pieces are equally authentic — they are part of the same creative journey, just signed with the name I started with.
If you are a collector and own a work signed as Pardillo, I would love to hear from you. Write to me at info@trujilloart.com, send me a photo of the work, and if I confirm it is mine, I will send you its certificate of authenticity.
Because every work deserves its story. And every story deserves to be completed.