Alfons Borrell

ALFONS BORRELL PALAZÓN (Barcelona, 1931-2020).
"Tardor", 1997.
Oil on canvas.
Signed, titled and dated on the back.
Measurements: 185 x 236 cm.

Alfons Borrell is considered one of the greatest exponents of lyrical abstraction in Spain. Starting from symmetries and geometrical abstractions, his work progressively simplified and gave prominence to a gesturality that is subsumed to the field of color. The latter can be seen in this composition, where the green field does not hide the trace of the brush that grants subtle irregularities on the surface. The slightly curved line that separates the orange from the green suggests the horizon line, because we mentally associate orange with the sun and green with the earth. In any case, the lyricism and austerity of this painting brings it closer to the interior or introspective landscape than to the will of representation.

Born in Barcelona but settled in Sabadell since he was 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.