Ciruelo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on July 20, 1963. His formal art training was limited to a few courses in drawing and advertising design, after which, at the age of 18, he immediately found work in an ad agency as an illustrator. At 21 he became a freelance illustrator, and has never looked back.
In 1987 Ciruelo traveled to Europe and settled in Sitges, a small town near Barcelona, Spain. He then embarked on a search for publishers for his "worlds of fantasy", eventually finding them in Spain, England, the United States and Germany, and through this means has reached a broad audience. Ciruelo continues to work for U.S. publishers, among them Bantam for whom he did book covers for the trilogy written by George Lucas, "Chronicles of the Shadow War."
He also has created a number of rock album covers, The 7th Song from Steve Vai being one of them. Other clients include Wizards of the Coast (Magic cards), TSR, Berkley, Tor, Warner, Ballantine, Heavy Metal magazine, Playboy magazine, etc.

In 1990 Ciruelo devoted eight months to designing and illustrating The Book of the Dragon to be published by the Spanish publisher Timun Mas, the work proved an enormous undertaking for Ciruelo, who had interrupted his daily routine to take on a project that was destined to profit him only in the long term. Foreign rights to The Book of the Dragon were sold to Paper Tiger, London, in 1992, who had also published his first artbook: Ciruelo, in 1990. An edition of The Book of the Dragon in CD Rom format was released recently by DAC Editions in Spain.
In 1997 the book Luz, the Art of Ciruelo came out. This third book features over 160 full color illustrations, a number of pencil sketches and ink drawings laid out in 128 pages.
In the year 2000 his fourth artbook Magia, the Ciruelo Sketchbook was published.

Ciruelo is currently working on a new artbook: Viajes, meaning journeys, which will feature many of his drawings from notebooks accompanied by short phrases which are ideas and concepts that very often are the base on which Ciruelo builds
his most personal paintings.