Miquel BARCELO (1957) Lot n° 1

Miquel BARCELO (1957) Esparrecs. Acrylic on canvas signed, dated "86" and titled on the back of the canvas. Dimensions: H. 130 cm, L. 195 cm. Slight jumps on the edges, slight scratches. A certificate on photo of the work indicating "Made by my hand in Barcelona in 1986, Barcelo" will be given to the future buyer. Miquel Barceló is an eminently singular artist. Describing himself as a "painter of matter", he has been developing an eclectic body of work since the 1970s, energetically combining art and joy. In the 1980s, as his reputation acquired an international dimension - he exhibited in the greatest museums and galleries - Miquel Barceló undertook a series of "culinary" paintings. Our painting, Esparrecs ("asparagus" in Catalan) is part of this gourmet line, as is "The Great Spanish Dinner" (1985), a painting acquired by the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. In this airy, dynamic composition, the harmony of blues, greens and yellows makes it possible to clearly perceive a bunch of asparagus, while others are only sketched out with a gesture. As for the pictorial material, it varies between thin translucent layers and generous impasto. In short, more than asparagus, it is painting that is at stake, to which Barceló pays tribute. For, as a connoisseur of the classics, the artist undertakes here a tenuous dialogue with the history of art. One thinks as much of Adriaen Coorte's Still Life with Asparagus (1697), preserved in the Rijksmuseum, as of Édouard Manet's painting The Asparagus (1880), exhibited at the Musée d'Orsay. This dialogue thus places Barceló in an illustrious lineage of great masters which, in a way, he transcends by exploring the limits of painting. Revealing the pictorial talent of Miquel Barceló, the most influential Spanish artist on the contemporary scene, the Esparrecs painting combines the advantages of a sure value on the art market and a joyful manifesto.