Modesto Cuixart Biography
Modesto Cuixart was a Spanish painter born in Barcelona on November 2, 1925. After studying biology and medicine, he began painting and attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona. In 1948 he exhibited at the October Salon in Barcelona. Between 1948 and 1951 he was part of the group of founding artists and animators of the magazine Dau al Set. In 1955 he formed, together with Tapies and Tharrats, the Taull group. In 1959 he won the prize for painting at the V Biennial of Sao Paulo, Brazil and the international prize for abstract art in Lausanne. He has participated in numerous international art exhibitions and has exhibited in Europe and America. He was one of the main exponents of the Barcelona school of painting. His work is characterized by continuous research and technical experimentation.
In his youth, Cuixart moved in a magical-surreal climate, and then reached, around 1956, a rich informalism in which the material, dense and sumptuous, endowed with an austere and dramatic chromaticism, became the protagonist of the works. After the mid-1960s, his painting turned towards a neo-figurative aspect, where the material, while retaining chromatic richness, passed to a subordinate function, leaving room for allegorical and symbolic figures that evoke a mythological world.
