For most artists, childhood memories of their father’s workplace might evoke images of offices, factories, or farms. For Fabian Perez, those formative years were spent observing the shadowy world of Las Brujas: a well-known nightclub owned by his father, Antonio, in Buenos Aires. Rather than shying away from these unconventional origins, Perez has transformed them into the cornerstone of his artistic vision, creating what he now calls Neo‑Emotionalism.
Childhood in the Shadows of Las Brujas
Born in 1967 in Campana, near Buenos Aires, Perez’s childhood was far from conventional. While his mother, Edua, a schoolteacher with artistic sensibilities, encouraged his natural drawing talent, his father’s nocturnal establishments provided the visual vocabulary that would define his career.
In his biography, he detailed that as a little boy, his subjects of admiration were the beautiful women and the suffering handsome men inside and outside Las Brujas: lighting a cigarette, having a drink, or just enjoying the night.
What might have been traumatic or inappropriate for other children became Perez’s graduate school in human emotion and theatricality. The young artist absorbed the atmosphere of these spaces—the dramatic interplay of light and shadow, the charged tension between desire and melancholy, the choreography of seduction and vulnerability that played out nightly. Rather than judge these scenes, he found in them a profound beauty that would later anchor his mature work.
The vivid imagery from his past became the anchor of his painting, with his father being mainly his inspiration. He painted his father as the ‘cool guy outside the nightclubs and bordellos’ that are found in his artworks.
The women in his memories were the ones he saw at his father’s nightclubs and brothels. They were often somber, their beautiful faces carrying their brooding thoughts, and they had an intense aura of sensuality and allure around them.
From Observation to Artistic Vision
His unflinching embrace of his unconventional past sets Perez apart in contemporary art. Where other artists might sanitize or romanticize difficult memories, he has chosen to honor the complexity of what he witnessed.
His paintings don’t exploit or sensationalize; they capture the humanity of people living on society’s margins. The women in his work aren’t mere objects of desire but complex figures caught in moments of contemplation, their stories written in gesture and expression.
The influence of Las Brujas extends beyond subject matter into Perez’s understanding of atmosphere and narrative. Those early observations taught him how a single cigarette could become a prop of seduction, how the quality of light could transform a mundane interaction into high drama, how clothing and posture could communicate volumes about internal states.
“A time when the man would take pride in shaving or simply fixing his tie. And the woman would follow a routine of slow and sensual movements, seducing a man just by lighting a cigarette,” he recalls of that era.
After losing both parents as a teenager and spending years traveling through Brazil, Italy, and Japan, Perez eventually settled in Los Angeles, where he consolidated these memories into his signature style. The discipline he learned from martial arts—particularly the Japanese calligraphy practice of Shodo—gave him the technical precision to render these emotional scenes with striking clarity.
Neo‑Emotionalism and Global Recognition
Today, Perez’s Neo‑Emotionalism movement represents a sophisticated evolution of those early observations. “Neo‑Emotionalism is a style that will be recognized by the artist who feels liberated after finishing his work, and by the viewer who can feel the artwork in his heart,” he explains. The movement emphasizes emotional authenticity over intellectual concepts, drawing viewers into intimate and universal scenes.
The following commercial success, with prestigious appointments as official artist for the Latin Grammy Awards and Winter Olympics, Vatican commissions, and collectors including Pope Francis and Lionel Messi, validates Perez’s decision to mine his unconventional past rather than abandon it.
His work proves that great art often emerges not from avoiding difficult truths but from transforming them into something beautiful and meaningful.
“I am constantly fighting for a more romantic world,” Perez has said, “one where the woman and the man have defined roles and power isn’t always the goal.” This philosophy, born from watching his father’s world with a child’s uncritical eyes, has become the foundation of an artistic practice that finds dignity in nightlife’s shadows and poetry in its most complicated human moments.
In refusing to judge what others might condemn, Perez has created a work that celebrates the full spectrum of human experience, proving that inspiration can be found in the most unexpected places.