Luis Toledo Laprisamata is a Madrid-based digital artist and illustrator known for densely collaged, detail-heavy images that fuse religious and mythological iconography with invented rituals and symbols.,Drawing on classical art history and the symbology of different cultures, he builds a recurring fictional universe he calls the Blue Desert.,
He worked as a senior art director at Young & Rubicam before turning to illustration for the music industry.,The agency Dutch Uncle represents his illustration and commercial work.His illustrations have accompanied music by artists including Weezer, Gary Clark Jr. and Antemasque, and he illustrated the first novel written by Pete Townshend of The Who.In 2022 he curated “ArtBabel”, described as the first exhibition in Madrid dedicated to art and NFTs, which drew more than forty thousand visitors.
Many of Toledo's works take place in the Blue Desert, an invented world in which Iberian priests perform rituals around a three-eyed skull and venerated black felines. He made much of this imagery during pandemic lockdown, when he wanted his characters set in “large open spaces where there was nothing to prevent the sky from being seen”.He extended the Blue Desert into Into the Blue Desert, a collaboration with the porcelain maker Lladró pairing seventy digital illustrations with seventy handcrafted porcelain skulls decorated with a starry sky and a third eye.In 2024 he minted Keeper of the Keys, card 261 in the collection The Memes by 6529, describing its sacred-amulet imagery as drawn from religious tradition.
