Alfons Borrell

ALFONS BORRELL PALAZÓN (Barcelona, 1931-2020).
Untitled. 1998.
Mixed media on thick paper.
Signed and dated.
Measurements: 74 x 112 cm; 82 x 120 cm (frame).

Alfons Borrell is considered one of the maximum exponents of the lyrical abstraction in Spain. In this composition the influence of Rothko and his floating color fields can be appreciated. Starting from symmetries and gestural abstractions, his work progressively simplified. Color plays a structural role in Borrell's work, in which he deploys large monochrome surfaces. He often focuses on a single geometric figure or on a graphic sign or dimensioning, with lyricism and austerity as his guiding principles.

Born in Barcelona but settled in Sabadell as a child, Alfons Borrell trained in the fifties with Hermen Anglada Camarasa in Mallorca and at the Escola de Belles Arts in Barcelona. In 1960 he was part of the Grup Gallot, a collective created in Sabadell that practiced actions halfway between action painting and surrealist automatism that questioned the limits of authorship and the pictorial medium. In 1971, he participated in the creation of Sala Tres in Sabadell. A close friend of Joan Brossa and artists such as Perejaume, throughout his extensive career, his pictorial abstraction has been consolidating as an expressive corpus of great intensity and solidity. Since his first solo exhibitions in the late fifties, Borrell has presented his work in prominent art venues in the country and also in France, Germany, the United States and Japan. The art critic Alexandre Cirici invited him to participate in the inaugural exhibition of the first Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona in the dome of the Coliseum Cinema in 1960. In 1978, he was part of the exhibition Seny i rauxa. 11 artistes catalans at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Among the numerous retrospectives of his work, those presented at the Centre Cultural Tecla Sala in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (2006), the Museu d'Art de Sabadell (2007) and the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona (2015) stand out.