With the help of Santiago Bellido (Valladolid, Spain, 1970) we want to know what motivates an artist to seek and promote beauty. Since last Saturday 15th and until today, the Church celebrates the Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture.
The Jubilee of Artists and the World of Culture that is being celebrated these days on the occasion of the Jubilee Pilgrims of Hope 2025 has been full of meetings, exhibitions and displays, some with a deeply supportive character, all events with dialogue and hospitality as a key task.
We wanted to join this Jubilee with this dialogue with Santiago Bellido Blanco (Valladolid, Spain, 1970), an architect specialising in Building and Urban Planning who teaches at the European University Miguel de Cervantes and has developed an entire artistic career as a cartoonist, illustrator and painter.
He began professionally making caricatures for the regional edition of the ABC newspaper, and has subsequently continued illustrating books, covers, posters and murals. In fact, he has just won the competition for the official poster for Holy Week in Valladolid 2025, the latest work that has gained well-deserved fame for its realism and originality, with a child as a symbol of the future of this Valladolid tradition.
He has held numerous exhibitions in places of reference for the cultural life of Castile and Leon such as the Calderón Theatre, the Patio Herreriano Museum of Contemporary Spanish Art, the Casa Revilla, the Municipal Archive of Valladolid, the Royal Museum of San Joaquín and Santa Ana, the Museum of the University of Valladolid or the churches of Las Francesas or San Agustín.
His paintings can be seen hanging on the walls of the European University Miguel de Cervantes, the Diocesan Seminary of Valladolid, the Temple of Our Lady of Lourdes de La Flecha, the Museum of the University of Valladolid, or temples of the Augustinian Recollects in Madrid, Marcilla (Navarra) or Rome (Italy).
How would you introduce yourself to someone who doesn’t know you?
I am an architect from Valladolid who quickly left the profession to devote myself to university teaching. As soon as I had my doctoral thesis underway, I decided to learn to paint in order to evolve, since my learning had initially been based on drawing.
I currently teach at the European University Miguel de Cervantes in Valladolid, which I arrived at almost eighteen years ago, and I have developed a discreet artistic career in parallel, as far as my time allows.
How are technique and style forged and evolved over the years? What influences or experiences do you consider key in your development?
Within the Architecture degree, there was a lot of emphasis on the didactic capabilities of drawing, and also on the rigor in the representation of three-dimensional spaces. In that field I developed with some comfort, since I had drawn all my life.
But when I finished my degree I decided to delve into painting and color, for which I enrolled in an academy where I spent a decade learning to use watercolor, oil, acrylic and, in general, anything that stained.
I have always kept within figurative realism, which I find more interesting and which complements well my training as a technician.
My way of painting took a conceptual leap when I attended a week-long workshop by the famous realist painter Antonio López. Then I realized the importance of painting directly from life. I already drew and made watercolors from life, but I had not dared to try direct portraits. It was a very significant advance.
What advice would you give to young artists starting out?
To work on technique. It is easy to think that an idea can justify a work, but it is easier to have good technique than good ideas in art and, I fear, the opposite is being taught.
Mastery of techniques allows us to materialize thought in an appropriate manner, and the discipline of learning improves our perception and our reflective capacities. I’d rather not go on!
How do you balance being and feeling like an artist with your teaching vocation?
After my time at university, and given my talent for drawing, it seemed to me that being a drawing teacher would be an idyllic life. I had had my first teaching experiences as a temporary second lieutenant in military service, and I had enjoyed it very much. So I tried to steer myself in that direction.
Teaching at a private university leaves little time for art, but the truth is that I draw almost every day, and I try to paint whenever I find the opportunity. I have set up a painting studio and receive regular commissions that meet all my expectations.
I am often told that I should show my work on social media and that I could greatly expand my market. But I do the painting that I can do without neglecting teaching, and that works well for me.
How has your collaboration with the Augustinian Recollects been?
As a child, as a student at the Saint Augustine High School of the Augustinian Recollects in Valladolid, my hometown, teachers began to ask me for caricatures and scenes from the school, usually related to sporting episodes, to illustrate events and publications.
At school I was always doing things, like stickers to sell to finance our end-of-year trip, or comics, or covers and illustrations for the magazine of the Alumni Association, which I did for many years.
When I finished my studies at the Saint Augustine High School, the Augustinian Recollects asked me for a painting of the patron saint for the school, which, by the way, I now look at with great shame: I still had a lot to learn! But, above all, I am grateful for that trust and the encouragement that it gave me. When I wanted to transfer these actions to the University… the professors did not take it so well!
For the Recollects I have continued to make some covers for their internal magazines, plates on the biography of Saint Ezequiel Moreno, the drawing-like plates for the correspondence of the missionary martyrs of Japan (which I enjoyed very much) and, in recent years, some larger works, such as the three large portraits dedicated to Saint Ezequiel Moreno, to the Japanese Recollect martyrs and to the Chinese Recollect martyrs.
I have found it important in these paintings to explore the symbolic nature of religious painting. The interaction between the secondary figures and what each one represents seems to me an opportunity to slip in ideas related to the main theme.
I believe that religious painting must have a supernatural component, and I still have to explore more poetic elements such as those that appear in Romanesque works.
Do you consider art a good vehicle to express and educate in faith? Does your faith influence your artistic expressions?
Art is a vehicle to suggest ideas and provoke sensations and, if the artist is good, to inspire elevated thoughts. This can apply to faith, but painting is above all communication. How this capacity is used depends on both the artist and the viewer.
For me, faith mainly influences prudence. Many artists find scandal a valuable path of expression. In my case, I tend to seek harmonious beauty to the detriment of other formulas. This can turn against me, especially in more avant-garde environments. But I believe that art should be sublime, and I try to do so through this medium.
For example, every time I am asked for a religious painting, I am actually commissioned to write a message, not an illustration. I have to be attentive to what is intended to be conveyed, since aesthetic motives are not only sought.
When I receive one of these works, I usually accompany it with a lot of readings related to the lives of the people represented, or their own writings, to try to be faithful to the background of the protagonist.
This has increased my religious culture and the way I understand my own spirituality. It is instructive to pay attention to the religious sensitivity of exceptional people, it is an opportunity to learn from the masters.
What does this Jubilee of artists mean to you?
Well, I think it is a statement, a reminder that art and religion have a lot to say to each other. It seems to me like an outstretched hand towards a cultural environment that is normally very intervened by secularist thoughts.
It can be an opportunity; and it is certainly a gesture of welcome. I hope that artists see the joyful meaning of this call! It is difficult for it to have a manifest effect on those who are not already believers, since the artistic environment tends to reject the manifestation of religiosity. But it seems to me to be a significant act of calling.
What are your next projects?
Right now I am very involved in an informative project in comics regarding heritage, which I hope will go well, although it will be complicated.
I want to find time to prepare an exhibition project, but it will not be this year, and we will see about next year!
As a goal, I would like to paint whatever I want and for something interesting to come out of it. Not so easy!
In the religious field, I would like to be alert and continue learning, through painting or not. And if my works inspire something positive, what more can I ask for?
