Cuixart, Modest
Modest Cuixart (Barcelona, 1925 – Palamós, 2007) was a key figure of the Spanish postwar avant-garde and a co-founder of the Dau al Set group, whose work evolved from an early magical Surrealism towards a more material and expressive painting defined by formal freedom.
Artworks
Adulación vespertina, 1964
Oil/canvas
101x81,4 cm
Noemí, 1964
Oil/canvas
61x73,2 cm
Untitled, 1960
Oil and mixed media/canvas
92,4x73 cm
Biography
Modest Cuixart is a central figure in the renewal of Spanish art in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1948, together with Joan Ponç, Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies and Joan Josep Tharrats, he co-founded Dau al Set, one of the most important avant-garde groups in postwar Barcelona, in dialogue with Surrealism and the philosophy of the absurd.
His early works are marked by a dreamlike and symbolic imagery, with unsettling figures, nocturnal atmospheres and a strong poetic charge. Over time, his painting evolved towards a more gestural and material language, in which pictorial matter plays a central role and the image gradually frees itself from figurative reference.
From the 1950s onwards and especially in later decades, he developed a freer and more experimental practice, where gesture, colour and texture become the main protagonists. His work consistently retains an introspective and vital dimension, far from any stylistic rigidity.
His trajectory occupies an important place within European abstraction and the renewal of postwar painting, both for his role in the Catalan avant-garde and for his evolution towards a deeply personal and open pictorial language.
His early works are marked by a dreamlike and symbolic imagery, with unsettling figures, nocturnal atmospheres and a strong poetic charge. Over time, his painting evolved towards a more gestural and material language, in which pictorial matter plays a central role and the image gradually frees itself from figurative reference.
From the 1950s onwards and especially in later decades, he developed a freer and more experimental practice, where gesture, colour and texture become the main protagonists. His work consistently retains an introspective and vital dimension, far from any stylistic rigidity.
His trajectory occupies an important place within European abstraction and the renewal of postwar painting, both for his role in the Catalan avant-garde and for his evolution towards a deeply personal and open pictorial language.