Miquel Barceló

MIQUEL BARCELÓ (Felanitx, Mallorca, 1957).
"Aurea dicta." 2019.
Numbered edition of 1,298 signed copies.
Hand-signed.
Original work reproduced using giclée digital printing with 8 Ultrachrome pigment inks on 310 g Hahnemühle William Turner paper, protected with a folder and neutral waxed paper.
Covers: cardboard lined with Wibalin Cotton White (Winter) paper, printed from an original by Miquel Barceló.
Interior: 120 pages + endpapers.
Endpapers: illustrations by Miquel Barceló printed on 140 g Flora Avorio (Cordenons) paper.
Interior: 120 g Munken Lynx Rough paper, printed in one color and one 4-color spread.
Binding: hardcover with 16-page sections sewn with thread; rounded spine with headbands.
Measurements: 16 × 32 cm (closed); 32 × 32 cm (open).

*Aurea dicta* is one of Miquel Barceló’s most ambitious publishing projects, recognized with the Ministry of Culture’s Best-Designed Book Award in the Bibliophilia category. This limited and signed edition brings together contemporary art and classical thought through the visual interpretation of a selection of 562 aphorisms by authors such as Virgil, Cicero, and Seneca, drawn from the original compilation by the Bernat Metge Foundation.

The project comprises a main volume of 228 pages featuring more than 120 pictorial interventions by the artist, in which motifs from the Mediterranean, wildlife, the human figure, and the landscape coexist. Barceló worked directly on a copy of the book conceived as a pictorial medium, incorporating techniques such as punctures, collages, splashes of color, and pigment transfers between pages. The edition reproduces these effects through high-quality printing processes, accompanied by giclée prints and an appendix of translations.

Miquel Barceló is one of today’s most renowned painters. In 1986, he was awarded the National Prize for Plastic Arts, and since then his work has been recognized with the most prestigious awards, such as the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts (2003) and the Sorolla Prize from the Hispanic Society of America in New York (2007). Barceló’s work is currently represented in the world’s most important contemporary art museums, such as MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Marugami Hirai in Japan, the Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Patio Herreriano in Valladolid, the CAPC in Bordeaux, the Carré d’Art in Nîmes, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, among others.