Illes 1, 1997

Alfons Borrell  

The painter Alfons Borrell was born in 1931 in Spain. He began painting as part of Hermen Anglada Camarasa’s workshop during his military service in Majorca and then trained at the Belles Arts de Sant Jordi. He is recognised as part of the great Spanish painters of his generation like Joan Miró or Antoni Tàpies and exhibits at the Fundació Joan Miró, the Centre Georges Pompidou, FIAC and more.

He initially focused on figurative art, which he abandoned for abstract expressionism. He became increasingly involved in projects in his city, Sabadell, and met Joaquim Montserrat and Juan Eduardo Cirlot. He worked with Antoni Angle, Joan Josep Bermudez and Manuel Duque on collective street work in the 60s, at a time when he was experimenting with gestural painting. From the 60s, he sought a simplification of form and a chromatic reduction and began to develop a strong reputation.

He seeks to reproduce the immersion offered by natural surroundings. His paintings often involve coloured squares, where the subject unfolds before us like windows opening onto the world, where the movement of the paint and colours recall the dynamics of nature: the flow of the sea or the appearance of a forest inspires incredible emotion.