Halfway between minimalism and Pop Art, the different stages of Julian Opie's career are linked by a predilection for clean, clear, meticulously rendered art and the use of multiple media. Opie has worked with painting, sculpture and installation, and even used computers and plasma screens for artistic purposes. His visual language is indebted to comic art, heavily influenced by his beloved Hergé, and has been compared to that of Utagawa Hiroshige and other Japanese ukiyo-e painters.

After years of heterogeneous creative activity, in the mid-1990s Opie turned his attention to a theme he had not addressed up to that point: the human figure. At first, the artist drew schematic characters with heads reduced to a simple circumference. Later they acquired individualised features, and the images became portraits of specific people from his own circle of acquaintances.

This interest in the human figure inspired him to tackle the nude and movement. With regard to the latter, the piece Kiera Walking marked a turning point in the artist's career. Conceived for a building designed by Jean Nouvel in Tokyo, in this work Opie wanted to reflect a simple, familiar movement, and walking met these requirements. Kiera, a young woman artist, thus became the symbol of the Baudelairean flâneur, as the critic Juan Manuel Bonet insightfully noted. In Seven People Walking (2009), Kiera is the first in a line of walkers. With her black miniskirt and long legs, this character thus joins the throng of people typical of the contemporary city. These studies of movement were created on LED screens, a medium the artist discovered on his trips to the Asian continent, and have been associated with the work of pioneering cinematographer Eadweard Muybridge. [Inés Vallejo]