Miquel Barceló

Miquel Barceló (Felanich, Baleares, 1957) is a Catalan painter and artist whose works are characterised by organic elements, placed on paint covered canvases. In order to experiment with physical and chemical reactions generated by nature, the artist also worked on canvases with consistent layers of paint exposed to different meteorological conditions. His painting embodies numerous cultural references: the Mediterranean background of his native island and of Mali, where he lived for some years as of 1988; action painting, the works by Jackson Pollock, Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, conceptual art and art brut. He inherited his interest in art from his mother, a painter. He attended drawing and modelling classes at the School of Decorative Arts of Palma de Mallorca from 1972 to 1973, continuing at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts of Barcelona in 1974. That same year he travelled to Paris where he saw painting by Paul Klee, Jean Dubuffet and discovered art brut, a style that was to have a lasting impact on him. Abandoning his studies, he continued his self-taught training by exploring paintings by artists such as Lucio Fontana, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning. In the mid ’70s, he entered the Taller Llunàtic Group, had his first exhibition in Barcelona and others in Mallorca. The international fame of Barceló arrived in his youth when he participated in the Biennial of Sao Paulo (1981) and due to the Documenta 7 by Kassel (1982) in which he was presented by Rudi Fuchs. Moreover, his work as a book illustrator (among others of Dante, Paul Bowles and Enrique Juncosa, etc.) and literature influenced his production. His work includes enormous canvases and murals, terracotta and ceramic sculptures where those contributions are transfigured in a neoexpressionist personal synthesis, with creative force and a dense presence of material and artistic craft. He divides his time between Majorca, Paris, and Mali. He is the youngest artist to ever show at the Musée du Louvre, where he exhibited his illustration work for La Divina Commedia of Dante. He has had retrospectives at renowned institutions, including Centre Pompidou (Paris), Musée Picasso (Paris), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid), the Guggenheim Bilbao (Spain), and is included in many esteemed public and private collections worldwide. He is also reputed to have decorated places as the Capilla del Santísimo in the cathedral of Mallorca and the ceiling of the human rights room at the ONU in Geneva. He has received the Doctor Honoris Causa from the Pompeu Fabra university in Barcelona in 2012 and from the Salamanca university in 2017.