Miquel Barceló valuation
Mallorcan painter of thick, earthy surfaces — bulls, fish, Africa, libraries — and of clay walls that fill a cathedral chapel.
Miquel Barceló was born in Felanitx, Mallorca, in 1957, and studied briefly at the art schools of Palma and Barcelona.
What a work by Miquel Barceló is worth
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Bio
Miquel Barceló was born in Felanitx, Mallorca, in 1957, and studied briefly at the art schools of Palma and Barcelona. He was twenty-five when he was chosen for documenta 7 in Kassel in 1982, and his heavily textured paintings of the 1980s — studios, libraries, kitchens, animals — made his name. In 1988 he first travelled to Mali, and he has worked there for long periods since, in the Dogon country, painting with local pigments and on occasion leaving works on paper to the termites. Africa, the sea, the bullring, fish and octopus have been constant subjects, and clay a constant material. He covered the chapel of Sant Pere in Palma Cathedral in modelled ceramic, unveiled in 2007, and the dome of the Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations Room at the United Nations in Geneva with dripped and poured colour in 2008. He represented Spain at the Venice Biennale in 2009.
His paintings are built of thick mixed media — pigment, earth, ash, paper and sometimes organic matter — so surfaces crack, shed and change, and condition needs expert examination. The ceramics are unique and fragile, and there is a substantial printed output and a great many works on paper, including watercolours and drawings from his African notebooks. Provenance through his galleries, among them Thaddaeus Ropac, Bruno Bischofberger and Galería Elvira González, and the date and place where a work was made are the main reference points.
Felanitx, documenta 7 and Mali
He received the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2003, and illustrated Dante's Divine Comedy with a cycle of watercolours.
In Paso Doble, performed at the Avignon Festival in 2006 with the choreographer Josef Nadj, the two men worked their way through a wall and floor of wet clay in front of the audience.
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