Miquel Barceló - Contemporary Art Day Sale London Wednesday, October 10, 2012 | Phillips

Create your first list.

Select an existing list or create a new list to share and manage lots you follow.

  • Provenance

    Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich
    Acquired from the above by the present owner

  • Exhibited

    Hong Kong, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Miquel Barceló: Recent Paintings, Ceramics and Sculpture,
    24 May – 29 July 2011

  • Catalogue Essay

    “Chauvet, Africa, still lifes, termites, masks or skulls, everything is linked
    like archetypes of humanity. For me, it is my everyday, my material and
    thought for each day. I trace maps of geographies that link all these
    worlds together.”
    (Miquel Barceló in E. Mezil, ed., Terramare: Miquel Barceló, Collection
    Lambert en Avignon
    , Arles, 2010, p.241)
    Throughout his oeuvre, Miquel Barceló has employed the materials
    that allow him to create the richly textured, expressive canvases highly
    evocative of the surface of the earth. À Livorno, from 2007, is a beautiful
    example of the artist’s gift to produce work that is abstract, yet at the
    same time highly referential. It allows the viewer to be guided in their
    imagination by those reference points, be they a stone, plant, fruit, or
    a skull, to contemplate the landscape and its origins. The title À Livorno
    indicates the place in Italy that inspired the artist and in this painting
    the sea port of Livorno is beautifully depicted by the pebbles set against
    the white and yellow background evoking the sunlit landscape and sea.
    In the artist’s own words: “I like the phenomenology of painting to look
    likenature”.
    À Livorno is painted in the traditional technique of the artist which
    remains a key aspect of Barceló’s practice. He has not succumbed to
    the new media, but instead prefers to explore and further develop more
    conventional materials from the earth itself: “Video camera, digital
    camera… actually I find it a bit pathetic. I really like to find my materials.
    Also, I always think of the modernity of thought, not of technique” (in E.
    Mezil, ed., Terramare, 2010, p.236).
    CTA_

  • Artist Biography

    Miquel Barceló

    Spanish • 1957

    Drawing inspiration from work by Diego Velázquez and art-making practices of the Avant-garde, Miquel Barceló is perhaps most popular for his hybridization of traditional Spanish figurative aesthetics and thick, abstract brushstrokes. Barceló is inherently drawn to that which is multimedia, having received training in installation work, painting and ceramic. This ability to work across various mediums comes from the artist's hunger for travel and exploring new lands.

    Currently based between Mallorca, Mali and Paris, Barceló incorporates the visual aesthetics of his disparate countries seamlessly into his work. The artist's concern involves how to translate different modes of travel and culture into art-making. One recurring topic in his body of work is the ocean — the ultimate symbol of movement, displacement and the unknown.

    View More Works

131

À Livorno

2007
mixed media on canvas
65 x 82 cm (25 5/8 x 32 1/4 in)
Signed and dated ‘Barceló 07’ on the reverse.

Estimate
£90,000 - 120,000 

Sold for £103,250

Contemporary Art Day Sale

11 October 2012
London