Manuel Molí

MANUEL MOLI (La Portella, Lleida, 1936 - Terrassa, 2016).
Untitled.
Oil on wood.
Signed in the lower left corner and on the back.
Measurements: 34 x 41 cm; 48 x 58 cm (frame).

Considered "El Bosco lleidatà" for its proximity to the enigmatic and complex painting of the artist from the Netherlands, the works of Manuel Molí delves into a dreamlike and phantasmagoric world full of unusual and extravagant characters. The surrealistic meaning and symbolic content of his works, coupled with a vibrant palette of vivid colors, make Molí a cult painter with a unique and unmistakable style.

Painter, draftsman and engraver. His painting reflects the influence of surrealist predecessors such as Brueghel and Goya, characterized by a tenebrous fantasy that acts in conjunction with his figures, fabulous beings and landscape scenes; representations that are the receptacle of a boundless imagination but at the same time trapped in itself. As for the plastic arts, self-taught, he presented his first exhibitions of ink drawing in 1959 and 1965 at the Centro Excursionista de Terrassa and later in various rooms in Arenys de Mar, Barcelona, Mataró, Sitges and also, of course, in the Friends of the Arts and Musical Youth of Terrassa, until exhibiting, in 1973, at the Adrià Gallery in Barcelona, a reference space for the art of the seventies in Catalonia for its support to the awakening of a new artistic sensibility in our country. With his incorporation into the world of the great galleries, Molí went from exclusively cultivating drawing to producing oil paintings that were exhibited for decades in Catalan and Spanish cities as well as in various cities around the world, including, for example, Asunción, Basel, Stockholm, Munich, New York, Nuremberg... either in individual or group exhibitions, and which can be seen in museums of modern and contemporary art in Barcelona, Stockholm, Madrid, Mataró, Nuremberg, Seville and Tarragona.