Manuel Aja Espil was born in 1987 in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Aspiring to be a filmmaker, he began a career in Film Directing, which he later abandoned to devote himself to painting and, self-taught, he learned to paint by imitating historical styles. His heuristic practice led him to investigations into the history and materiality of painting. His work is with imaginary universes that are a mixture of European pictorial tradition and contemporary iconography, he works with landscape, memory and fiction. He resided at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2019, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program in 2022. His most relevant individual exhibitions were Joseph Andreas (2018, Quadro Arte Contemporáneo, CABA, Argentina) and Anton Regularis (2017, CCR, CABA, Argentina ). He has participated in exhibitions in MALBA (Argentina), Fundación Proa (Argentina) and MUNTREF (Argentina).