Miquel Barceló?s retrospective presented in Barcelona

Barcelona (CNA).- ‘Tot Barceló’ (Everything Barceló) is a current exhibition that spans the trajectory of artist Miquel Barceló’s works. The exhibition is composed of two parts, ‘Barceló abans de Barceló’ (Barceló before Barceló) that shows the first pieces of the Majorcan artist, and ‘La Solitude Organisative’ (Organisational Solitude) that displays the trajectory of the artist from his first success at the Documenta of Kassel in 1983 until today. The retrospective aims to understand the diverse and provocative experiences of the Majorcan painter.
From the heart of Majorca to Paris, passing through Naples, Mali, and Barcelona, Miquel Barceló is one of the most internationally recognised Catalan painters. Starting with expressionism and moving on to action painting, conceptual art and outsider art, Barceló found a personal style based in traditional figurativism without abandoning experimentation with techniques and materials.

Jaume Reus, one the of the exhibition’s curators, explained that as a rural and urban painter in an environment full of “animals and material”, Barceló has been able to bring nature into his works in an attractive way.

As a matter of fact, inspiration from nature is constant in the artist’s trajectory. This is demonstrated not only in the content he produces but in the quality of the materials he chooses to work with.

Barceló has become one of the classics in Catalan contemporary painting and the retrospective exhibition that began this Wednesday consecrates his place in Catalan culture and art.

Double exhibition

Despite being a retrospective, both exhibitions have strayed away from chronological order, structuring his works thematically so that the spectator may pass through the various themes that the Majorcan painter has experimented with.

‘Barceló abans de Barceló’ (Barceló before Barceló) shows the initial works of the painter, from 1973 until his international breakthrough at the Documenta in Kassel in 1983. The exhibition presents over 100 works, many unedited, that portray many of the most important characteristics of the beginning stages of the artist’s trajectory.

Structured into six parts: Bestiary, Vanitas, Experimental Poetry, Books, Portraits & Self-Portraits, and Landscapes, the exhibition attempts to bring the spectator into Barceló’s world. One which the curator’s of exhibition, Jaume Reus and Maria Hevia, have defined as “experimental” and “voracious”, “going against the tide” at a moment when conceptual art dominated Catalonia.

The other exhibition, entitled ‘La Solitude Organisative’ (Organisational Solitude), is named after one of Barceló’s last paintings as well as a micro series. According to the painter, in his beginnings he identified with a quadruped animal, for his manner of painting resembled a dog, but now he identifies more with a biped; an evolution that is shown figuratively in his work.

This evolution is precisely what the exhibition wants to show. With 180 pieces, some selected by the painter himself and others from his own collection, the exhibition invites the viewer to form a relationship with Barceló based on the themes and materials he uses in his work.

The retrospective can be seen from the 15th of July until the 26th of September at the Santa Mònica Museum of Art and from the 16th of July to the 9th of January at the CaixaForum.