Miquel Barceló | Flores, peces, toros
Installation Views: Miquel Barceló | Flores, peces, toros, All images: © Courtesy of the artist and Galería Elvira González
“Painting is linked to childhood. It is probably true that we learn what is important before we are ten years old. I have the impression that, in painting, at the age of ten I had already done almost everything I have done and continue to redo. In Mallorca I learned the names of trees, fish, birds. learned to whistle, throw stones, fish, kill and gut hares and lambs, and cook them. I usually paint what I kill or what I eat”.
Miquel Barceló, Tropicalismo, 2024, 235 x 235 cm, técnica mixta sobre lienzo
Galería Elvira González is pleased to announce the fourth exhibition of Miquel Barceló in the gallery which opened on Wednesday, January 29. Flores, peces, toros will feature paintings, ceramics and watercolors with marine topics, bullfighting themes, still life and nature.
Miquel Barceló, Vanitas au melon, 2024, 160 x 240 x 4 cm, técnica mixta sobre lien
The first room revolves around bullfighting. The art of bullfighting is a constant subject for Barceló, who painted his first bullfight in 1980; since then it has been a theme he has obsessively used and worked with in detail. From a bird's eye view or as a spectator in the bullring, Barceló's bullfight paintings capture passes and moments that only those who know the universe around bullfighting in depth can describe. Or paint. Continuing with the exhibition, ceramics with various types of masks and fishes will be on display; masks that may look like the portrait of the artist himself. The sea is another theme widely depicted in his work. “My day-to-day life is summed up in painting, swimming and reading” the artist says. Interested in the organic life and the passage of time, Barceló considers ceramics an extension of his painting.
Installation Views: Miquel Barceló | Flores, peces, toros, All images: © Courtesy of the artist and Galería Elvira González
The third room in the gallery displays still life paintings, flowers, marine and under the water fauna as well as works on paper and ceramics of all kinds, where once again, the toros, the marine theme, animals, fauna and flora are intermingled. The artist acts like the prehistoric cave painter who paints out of an imperious need to transmit. In the studio, Barceló cannot refrain from painting what he sees and captures in his daily life and transforms it into art reflecting what surrounds him and the universe in which he is immersed.
Miquel Barceló (Felanitx, 1956) first exhibited in the mid-1970s and quickly gained international recognition. He started his art studies in Barcelona but ended up quitting in order to start an independent pictorial career. In 1974 he had his first solo exhibition at the Picarol Gallery in Mallorca bursting onto the international scene at the Sâo Paulo Biennial in 1981, and at Documenta VII in Kassel (Germany) in 1982.
Miquel Barceló has had exhibitions in major museums such as the CAPC (Bordeaux), the IVAM (Valencia), the Jeu de Paume, the Centre Pompidou, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Museé du Louvre (all five in Paris), The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (Rome), the Museu d'Art Contemporani (Barcelona), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), the Museo Nacional de Arte de Osaka (Japan) and recently the Küppersmühle Museum in Duisburg (Germany). He has also made major interventions in public spaces such as the ceramic covering in the Chapel of Sant Pere in the Cathedral of Mallorca or the dome of Room XX of the Palais des Nations Unies in Geneva. Throughout his career, Miquel Barceló has received awards such as the National Prize for the Arts in Spain 1986 and the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2003.
For more information about this exhibition and others, please visit the Galería Elvira González’s website. The gallery can be found on Vimeo, Facebook and Instagram.
