Ángel Marcos is one of the key figures in Spanish contemporary photography and image-making. He lives and works between Madrid and Valladolid. Since the late 1990s, he has developed a practice focused on landscape, architecture, territory and structures of power, approached through a critical perspective on modernity, the city and its fictions. His work combines photography, video and installation, with a political and poetic dimension that runs through series such as Alrededor del sueño, China, La Mar Negra, En Cuba and Paisajes de resistencia.
His work is included in some of the most important international public and private collections, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), IVAM (Valencia), MUSAC (León), Artium (Vitoria-Gasteiz), the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Madrid, Museo Patio Herreriano (Valladolid), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo CA2M, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain (France), the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse (Miami), the Lentos Museum (Linz), the CONTRETYPE Collection (Brussels), Fundación ARCO, Fundación Vila Casas, Fundación Sorigué, Fundación María Cristina Masaveu Peterson and the Pilar Citoler Collection, among many others. His presence in these collections consolidates his position as one of the Spanish artists with the strongest international projection and institutional recognition in contemporary photography.
In the public realm, his permanent work Rastros 26, installed at the Building of the Cortes of Castile and León (Valladolid), stands out as a project that links image, memory and institutional architecture, integrating his research on territory and power within a civic and urban context.
Over more than three decades, he has held solo exhibitions in museums and art centers across Europe, the Americas and Asia, including DA2 Domus Artium (Salamanca), the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Havana), the Royal Botanical Garden of Madrid, Sala Canal de Isabel II, Museo Artium, MACUF, MUSAC, the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (Paris), the Naples Museum of Art and The Margulies Collection (Miami), as well as the Palais Rasumofsky in Vienna. In 2025 he presents Topologías intempestivas at DA2 Domus Artium in Salamanca, and in recent years he has developed projects such as Arquitecturas para sobrevivir and Paisajes de resistencia, which deepen his exploration of the relationship between landscape, precarity and structures of control.
His work has also been featured in major international biennials and exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, the Havana Biennial, PhotoEspaña, the Canary Islands Biennial and the Lanzarote Biennial, as well as in group exhibitions at institutions including the Museo Reina Sofía, IVAM, Centro de Arte Alcobendas, Es Baluard Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Palma, Centro Conde Duque, Museo Patio Herreriano, the Museo de Arte Abstracto Español in Cuenca and Tenerife Espacio de las Artes.
Ángel Marcos’s career is defined by a sustained investigation into the contemporary landscape as an ideological construction, addressing migration flows, globalization, the city and its peripheries. Widely collected and exhibited in international museum contexts, his work articulates a critical and highly contemporary reflection on how we inhabit and represent the world.
