8th Foios Painting Competition

The Valencian visual artist José María Cal was a finalist in the 8th Foios Painting Competition (Valencia) with his work "Beyond Dawn," created in 2025. The oil on canvas measures 120 cm high by 120 cm wide.


The exhibition will be open to the public from Friday, January 16th to Sunday, January 25th, 2026 at the Fernando Barrachina Exhibition Hall, Plaza de España, 1 – 46134 Foios (Valencia).

Review of the work: Más allá del amanecer, part of the Foios 2026 Painting Competition.

Author: Exhibition curator Neus Carceller Lacruz.

"Valencian artist Jose María Cal depicts landscapes, seeking to create a contemplative connection with nature and encouraging viewers to develop their own world and connect with the work in a profound and playful way. Like Alex Marco, Cal Carvajal attaches importance to the creative process. He explains that the work is an evolving structure, in construction and deconstruction. And mistakes, emptiness and corrections are also constituent elements of the discourse. ‘Más allá del amanecer’, the work shown in this exhibition, follows the usual line of work in abstract landscapes with figurative references. These figurative references help us to interpret the work. A free interpretation that seeks to reflect on the representation of the landscape and the individual way of preserving the territory. The figurative forms that appear subtly suggest a representation of memories and dreams as things that we know existed but cannot prove".