Miquel Barceló

MIQUEL BARCELÓ ARTIQUES (Felanitx, Mallorca, 1957).
Untitled.
Engraving, edition H.C. 3/6.
Signed and numbered by hand.
Shows foxing and water stains.
Measurements: 22.5 x 33 cm (print); 37 x 48 cm (paper); 38.5 x 50 cm (frame).

A painter and sculptor, Barceló began his training at the School of Arts and Crafts in Palma de Mallorca, where he studied from 1972 to 1973. In 1974, at just seventeen years old, he held his first solo exhibition at the Picarol Gallery in Mallorca. That same year, he moved to Barcelona, where he enrolled at the Sant Jordi School of Fine Arts and made his first trip to Paris. In the French capital, he discovered the work of Paul Klee, Fautrier, Wols, and Dubuffet, as well as “art brut,” a style that would have a significant influence on his early paintings. During these years, he read extensively and was enriched by works as diverse as the writings of Breton and the Surrealists, Lucio Fontana’s “White Manifesto,” and Arnold Hauser’s “Social History of Literature and Art.” In 1976, he held his first solo museum exhibition: “Cadaverina 15” at the Museum of Mallorca, consisting of an installation of 225 wooden boxes with glass lids, containing decomposing organic materials inside. That same year, back in Mallorca, he joined the Taller Lunàtic group and participated in its social, political, and cultural protest activities. In 1977, he made a second trip to Paris and also visited London and Amsterdam. That same year, he exhibited for the first time in Barcelona and met Javier Mariscal, who would become one of his closest friends in the city. Together with him and photographer Antoni Catany, he participated—as a member of the “Neón de Suro” group—in exhibitions in Canada and California, and contributed to the publication of the magazine of the same name. It was also in 1977 that he received his first large-scale painting commission: a mural for the dining room of a hotel in Cala Millor, Mallorca. The following year, at the age of twenty-one, he sold his first works to several collectors and galleries and eventually moved to Barcelona. His international recognition began in the early 1980s, and his career was definitively launched following his participation in the São Paulo Biennial (1981) and Documenta in Kassel (1982). In 1986, he was awarded the National Prize for Visual Arts, and since then his work has been honored 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, including 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.