Miquel Barceló (*1957 in Felanitx, Mallorca) is the most internationally successful Spanish artist today. He is known for his versatile works, which range from large-format paintings, ceramics and bronze sculptures to numerous sketchbooks and book illustrations. The MKM is showing the first large-scale solo exhibition of this artist in Germany with around 70 paintings from all creative periods and a selection of ceramics as well as a cabinet with sketches, designs for major projects and objects from the artist’s collection – a fascinating insight into the pictorial world of one of the great painters of our time.
Miquel Barceló, Sin Título (Ohne Titel), 2021, Mischtechnik auf Leinwand, 201 x 300 x 4 cm, Besitz des Künstlers, © Miquel Barceló / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024, Foto © David Bonet
His gripping work is characterised by a radical confrontation of opposing aspects – from the everyday to the monumental, from the joyful to the morbid. The starting point of the concept is the modest genre of the still life, one of the foundations of the painterly tradition in Europe. The Spanish special form of still life is known as bodegón and describes paintings whose motifs are the presentation of simple foods and kitchen utensils. Still life, with its ambivalent metaphors about life and death, was always a key inspiration for Barceló’s existential approach to painting.
After studying art in Palma de Mallorca and Barcelona, he joined a group of conceptual artists in 1976 who dealt with ecological issues. During the 1980s, he enriched his painting with organic materials such as earth, stone and plant matter. His works were inspired by Antoni Tàpies and Anselm Kiefer, among others. With themes such as decay and transcendence, he reacted to Spanish mysticism and the tradition of Baroque painting.
The art of Miquel Barceló finds its great precursors in the works of Tintoretto and Veronese, and later in the paintings of Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. Barceló itself is well on the way to becoming a classic. He is a nomad. His paintings tell of the everyday, of life and death and also of foreign and distant worlds – of Africa, where he lives and works from time to time, of the Catalan coast and the Balearic Islands, where he was born and grew up, and of the underwater world of the sea, which he explores time and again as a diver. The realism of his depictions often reveals itself abruptly, behind an apparently abstract and very physical style of painting, which demonstrates her profound knowledge of the art of abstract expressionism by Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Miquel Barceló is a world artist whose work spans from the Palaeolithic cave paintings of Altamira and Lascaux to the present day.
He has carried out numerous public commissions, including the design of the Chapel of St Peter in the Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca with ceramic works (2002-2007) and the dome of Room XX (The Human Rights and Alliance of Civilzation Chamber) in the Palais des Nations of the UN in Geneva (2007-2008).
The exhibition is significantly supported by three sponsors:
Telefónica, Sparkassen-Kulturstiftung Rheinland, Sparkasse Duisburg. With the kind support of the Florian Wilms family.
