Death and Ravens: from a loose idea to a site that already works

Death and Ravens began as a loose idea and, for a long time, it was several ideas at once. Today it is a site that works: it publishes study editions on artists, delivers them in Spanish and English, and accepts payments in a digital currency. This text tells how we got here and what, exactly, is done in this place.

Two trades, one curiosity

I am an electronic engineer, data scientist and developer. My professional life has revolved around technology, but in parallel, and almost in silence, painting, museums and art were always there. I wanted to study Fine Arts, with a focus on electronic media and time-based arts. I ended up an engineer, and in my environment that usually lasts for life.

The visual side found another path. Since 2002 I had been experimenting on the web with HTML and JavaScript. In 2008 I discovered Processing and generative programming, and since 2019 I have worked with p5.js. From there I moved to generative design and, later, generative art. I tried to make art with code and found something worth saying honestly: I lacked the conceptual foundations to compose and sustain a body of work. That did not take me away from art; it brought me closer to those who do know how to make it.

What was tried before

The first version of Death and Ravens was to publish my own generative work and wait for someone to take an interest or want to buy. I grew impatient and dropped it. Other ideas followed: publishing, promoting artists, opening a space. Each had something true and none had a shape.

What was built

The shape arrived when I stopped asking what art I would make and asked what I know how to do that emerging art needs. Data, engineering and development, applied to one concrete question: what is known, from verifiable sources, about this artist? That question became a project: a site of our own, a catalog of artists, a system that generates each study as a dated PDF and delivers it only once payment is confirmed, and a bilingual publication with a new edition every week.

It is worth saying plainly: this site was developed with Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant. The architecture, the code and the texts were worked on in conversation with it. The editorial decisions are mine, and the research always rests on public sources that are cited. It is part of how we got here and of what is possible today: a project that begins with one person and new tools.

What we do

Death and Ravens is not a gallery and does not sell artworks. We study artists and publish Artist Studies: profile and career, documented price history, a six-axis radar, comparable artists and a curatorial reading. Each study is a dated snapshot of the market, not a subscription. When a piece of data cannot be confirmed, we say so, even if it leaves a gap in the table. So far we have studied Mark Ryden, Mateusz Kołek and Guim Tió. Payments are received in USDT, a stable digital currency that travels as easily to any country.

Why this name

Death and the raven are two of the most persistent symbols of the dark tradition in art and literature: the memento mori, the vanitas, the Gothic, Poe's raven. We chose them as a reading of the brand. The territory that interests us is that of dreamlike figuration, symbolism, the macabre and the dark done with craft, of artists who look straight at what others avoid. We do not claim that every artist we study paints death or ravens: we claim that this is the tradition they converse with and from which we read them.

Another territory joins it, one that has always been with me: science fiction, dystopian and retrofuturist aesthetics, visual horror. Death and Ravens lives at the crossing of engineering, software and dark art.

What comes next

A new edition every week, in two languages, a growing catalog and an events space that is about to open. Thank you for being here from the beginning.

Nicolás Báez, founder of Death and Ravens · November 2026