Miquel Barceló - Böcker

A catalogue of dazzling new work by one of Spain’s most acclaimed contemporary artists known for his experimental approach and nontraditional materials.This book highlights the highly creative work of Barceló (b. 1957) with more than a dozen new paintings and a selection of recent ceramic objects. Born in Mallorca, Barceló’s mixed-media paintings, sculptures, and ceramics often feature relief-like textures and expressive forms. His fascination with the natural world has inspired his richly textured canvases that recall the earthly materiality of Catalan painters such as Antoni Tàpies and Joan Miró, as well as compositions that study the effects of light and the ever-changing colors of the sea.  The book includes a selection of new paintings from the corrida series, depicting the circular space of the bullfighting ring in vibrant colors. His ceramic practice includes his distinctive forms molded by hand then painted in vivid colors. Excerpts from Barceló’s recent autobiography, De la vida mía (Of My Life), bring together his notebooks, paintings, photos, stories, and objects from the artist’s various studios.

Miquel Barceló’s work is entwined with the intimate bond he has maintained with the sea since childhood, and which he continues to study and explore every day. This book offers an immersion into the profuse production of an artist who is passionate about fishing, swimming and diving, for whom the aquatic world remains the primordial environment, omnipresent in his work from his earliest paintings to his most recent creations. Between abysses and shores, ocean floors merge with the water’s surface, underwater caves turn into waves, the forms and fauna of the deep adjoin fossil compositions and seafood banquets. Featuring unseen contributions by Marie Darrieussecq and Chantal Thomas, an interview with Patrick Mauriès and a critical review by Björn Dahlström, Guillaume de Sardes and Stéphane Vacquier, Miquel Barceló: Oceanographer invites us to discover fifty years of artistic experimentations by this essential contemporary creator.