Mayoral

Albert Serra (Banyoles, 1975) is a Catalan filmmaker, screenwriter, and producer known for a radical and experimental body of work that pushes beyond the limits of conventional narrative cinema. Trained in Hispanic Philology, Literary Theory, and Comparative Literature at the University of Barcelona, his artistic practice is characterized by a free reinterpretation of literary, historical, and philosophical references. He debuted internationally with Honor de caballería, presented at the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, followed by El cant dels ocells, widely praised by critics. Serra has combined cinema and contemporary art with projects for institutions such as MACBA or dOCUMENTA (13). His work has been the subject of retrospectives in major museums and has received important international awards such as the Golden Leopard of Locarno. With a rigorous and anti-narrative style, Serra occupies a unique place in contemporary European cinema.

Artist link

Alexander Calder (Philadelphia, 1898 - New York, 1976) revolutionized modern sculpture through the creation of mobiles, kinetic works that move with air currents, and stabiles, monumental static sculptures. Born into a family of artists, he trained in New York before moving to Paris in 1926, where he developed the Cirque Calder, a performative work that fascinated the Parisian avant-garde. In 1931 he began his first abstract moving sculptures, a term coined by Marcel Duchamp as “mobiles.” Back in the United States, he began working on large-scale outdoor sculptures. From the 1950s onward, established again in France, Calder focused on monumental commissions for public spaces, consolidating his international reputation. His contribution redefined the relationship between sculpture, space, and movement.

Artist link

Antoni Tàpies (Barcelona, 1923 - 2012) was one of the key figures of European contemporary art and one of the main renovators of Informalism. After beginning drawing in adolescence, he abandoned law studies to fully dedicate himself to art. In the late 1940s he co-founded the avant-garde magazine Dau al Set, and gradually developed a body of work focused on materiality, incorporating non-traditional materials and highly expressive textures. In the mid-1950s he achieved international recognition with his matter paintings, conceived as spaces of symbolic and almost alchemical reflection. His production maintains a strong ethical and political commitment, especially during Francoism, and later incorporates influences from Eastern culture. He also stood out as a thinker, writer, and promoter of the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, leaving a decisive mark on 20th-century art.

CV

Artist link

Antonio Saura (Huesca, 1930 – Cuenca, 1998) is regarded as one of the most influential Spanish artists of the twentieth century. Initially associated with Surrealism, he soon developed a distinctive visual language characterized by distorted human figures, forceful brushwork, and a predominantly dark palette. In 1957, he co-founded the El Paso group.

He quickly gained international recognition through exhibitions across Europe, the United States, Latin America, as well as through his participation in the Venice Biennale and several editions of Documenta in Kassel.

Saura received prestigious awards, including the Guggenheim Award (New York), Grand Prize at the Bianco e Nero Print Biennale (Lugano), Prize at the First European Print Biennale (Heidelberg), Grand Prix des Arts de la Ville de Paris, and the Liberté Prize (Sarajevo). His work is held in major museum collections, including the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Artist link

Fernand Léger (Argentan, 1881 - Gif-sur-Yvette, 1955) was a key figure of 20th-century modern art, initially associated with Cubism, although he developed a highly distinctive personal language. Born in Argentan, Normandy, he trained as an architect before dedicating himself to painting. His early works show the influence of Cézanne and Analytical Cubism, with geometric forms and fragmented volumes. After the First World War, in which he served as a soldier, his work evolved toward the so-called “Tubism,” characterized by cylindrical forms, flat colors, and a mechanical aesthetic inspired by industrialization. Léger incorporated elements of modern life such as machines, cities, and stylized human figures.
He also worked in stage design, film, and mural painting, advocating for accessible art. He deeply influenced later movements such as Pop Art through his celebration of contemporary visual culture.

Fernando Botero (Medillin, 1932 - Mónaco, 2023) was a world-renowned Colombian painter and sculptor, best known for his distinctive artistic style known as Boterismo—characterized by exaggerated, voluminous figures and forms. Playful yet profound, his art explored themes of beauty, power, politics, and human nature, making him one of the most recognizable and influential Latin American artists of the 20th and 21st centuries.

José Luis Barquero (Barcelona, 1997) is an artist whose practice is radically focused on painting, understood not only as a medium but as a form of thought and presence. Although he occasionally works in other disciplines, painting constitutes the structural core of his production. His work develops as an open system between image, gesture, and scene, in which error, urgency, and the body act as formal and conceptual drivers. Far from representation, painting generates conditions of presence and tension, situating itself on a threshold between the visible and the unreachable. The figures that appear are residues of an action rather than defined narratives. Barquero questions the possibility of an image not coded by desire or oriented toward permanence, proposing an experience of perceptual suspension with a subtle metaphysical dimension.

Joan Miró (Barcelona, 1893 - Palma, 1983) is considered one of the key figures of 20th-century art for the construction of a personal and innovative visual language. His work is characterized by the use of intense colors, biomorphic forms, and an apparently elemental symbolism influenced by Surrealism and the exploration of the subconscious. After an initial phase marked by Fauvism, Expressionism, and Cubism, during the 1930s he consolidated a flat painting style with a stable repertoire of cosmic signs and simplified forms. Miró deliberately rejected academic conventions and any strict affiliation to specific artistic movements, with the aim of developing an autonomous and integrative art. His production reflects a critical sensitivity toward political and social contexts. International recognition was consolidated with the 1941 MoMA retrospective in New York, followed by numerous exhibitions in major museum institutions.

CV

Artist link

Jordi Alcaraz (Calella, 1963) is a Catalan painter and sculptor who, since the 1980s, has developed a trajectory marked by a critical re-examination of the traditional boundaries between painting and sculpture. From the 1990s onward he consolidated a hybrid and multidisciplinary artistic practice that questions the very notion of the art object. His work focuses on reflection on volume, language, and time through the use of seemingly simple materials such as water, glass, mirror, pigment, books, or stone; transformed into visual metaphors of great poetic intensity. His works often exceed pictorial and sculptural space to engage in dialogue with architecture. He has exhibited widely internationally and participated in major art fairs. Particularly notable are his exhibitions at Jack Rutberg Fine Arts in Los Angeles, which consolidated his international recognition.

Marria Pratts (Barcelona, 1988) is a contemporary artist who develops an intuitive and visceral painterly practice closely linked to urban experience and everyday life. Her work often starts from materials found in contexts of urban decay, which she transforms into images charged with expressive and poetic force. The studio becomes a space of fusion between life and creation, where spontaneous gesture and reflective thought coexist. Her production can be interpreted as a critique of contemporary social structures, especially the effects of gentrification and tensions within the urban landscape. Despite her youth, she has exhibited in major institutions such as the Fundació Joan Miró and MACBA, as well as leading international art fairs. Her work conveys a sense of resistance and vitality in the face of contemporary precarity.

Artist link

Niki de Saint Phalle (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1930 - San Diego, 2002) was a French artist whose career was marked by radical experimentation, autobiographical content, and a clear critical and feminist dimension. Without academic training, she began working in art after a traumatic childhood, developing a free and unconventional language. She achieved international recognition in the 1960s with the Tirs, assemblages made by shooting at the canvas, incorporating violence, chance, and performativity into the creative process. Later she created the Nanas, monumental sculptures of exuberant female figures in bright colors, becoming symbols of vital and bodily affirmation. Her most ambitious project was the Tarot Garden, a large-scale sculptural park. She collaborated with numerous artists, especially Jean Tinguely. Despite health problems, she maintained intense production until the end of her life, becoming a key figure in 20th-century feminist art.

Pablo Picasso (Málaga, 1881 - Mougins, 1973) is one of the most decisive figures of 20th-century art. Painter, sculptor, printmaker, and multidisciplinary creator, he developed most of his career in France and had a decisive influence on the development of modern art. He is especially recognized as co-founder of Cubism, as well as for the invention of collage and constructed sculpture. His work shows an exceptional capacity for formal transformation, articulated in different periods, including the Blue Period, the Rose Period, Analytic Cubism, and Synthetic Cubism. Works such as Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907) and Guernica (1937) synthesize his innovative character and his engagement with historical reality. Extremely prolific, Picasso achieved universal recognition and a central position in contemporary art history.

Artist link

Regina Giménez (Barcelona, 1966) is a visual artist born in Barcelona in 1966, known for her work within geometric abstraction and the reuse of found imagery. She trained in design and visual arts in Barcelona and since the late 20th century has developed a practice focused on painting, collage, and the artistic object. Her work often draws from pre-existing materials such as old maps, scientific graphics, astronomical diagrams, or pedagogical schemes, which she transforms into compositions of great visual power. Through simple geometric forms, fields of color, and rhythmic structures, she constructs a language that dialogues with modernity and the tradition of abstraction. Her work explores concepts such as time, space, measurement, and cosmic order, positioning itself between representation and formal synthesis. She has exhibited in national and international galleries and museums, consolidating a recognized career within Spanish contemporary art.

Artist link

Salvador Dalí (Figueres, 1904 - 1989) was a Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, noted for his systematic exploration of the subconscious imagination. Trained in Madrid and Barcelona, he absorbed multiple artistic languages before defining his mature style in the late 1920s after reading Sigmund Freud and joining the Surrealist group in Paris. In this context he developed the paranoid-critical method, intended to produce controlled hallucinatory states as a source of creation. Between 1929 and 1937 he produced his best-known works, characterized by meticulous depictions of everyday objects distorted in dreamlike settings, often linked to the Catalan landscape. In the late 1930s he adopted a more academic style, which led to his expulsion from Surrealism. He later diversified his artistic and literary production, addressing religious, erotic, and autobiographical themes with a strong public projection.

Artist link