Miguel Illescas Art Gallery

Truly fabulous artwork. Well worth a visit.

This was the best art gallery we visited in Cuenca, no doubt. Most of the work—a truly incredible amount of work—is that of Miguel Illescas. He works a lot with metals and chemicals to produce a wide variety of pieces which I cannot even begin to describe. He crafts sirens, elaborate boats full of coral musicians, hummingbirds, lizards, and tons of remarkable abstract pieces, too. My dear companion and I briefly got to meet the artist and almost had coffee with him in the gallery. We were just sitting down to coffee when another couple came in looking to buy something, so of course they took precedence. But Señor Illescas is the kind of kind guy who welcomes anybody into his gallery—he didn't seem snobby in the slightest! Ojalá he doesn't mind that we took a few pictures... Photos of art never do it any justice, we know that; we just wanted to share these unique beauties with some people who can't get all the way to Cuenca. But if you can, go and visit this gallery yourself! The gallery features a few other artists in a smaller section of the gallery, where there are some great wood sculptures and paintings. Overall it is an enormous gallery—clean, classy, comfortable, and chock full of spectacular artwork. Take your time in this one, amigo.

Very nice high end gallery close to the banco central museum. Has some nice metal art and other media as well. The owner/main artist is very personable and attentive.

A lovely art gallery. Miguel Illescas' metal artwork is interesting and colorful, I have seen several pieces that I would like to own. He also features other area artists and often has music.

He creates extraordinary pieces (metal an paint) you won't find anywhere else. His work is great but not cheap. They also ship globally with DHL (pricey) I saw some of his smaller pieces on the Galapagos but for 3x the price...