Miquel Barceló a světy slov

The catalogue for the exhibition Miquel Barceló and the Written Worlds, presents the work of one of Europe’s most prominent contemporary artists in dialogue with the world of literature. The publication maps the painter’s enduring interest in books, their authors, and literary imagination. Barceló relates to literature in a variety of ways, from paintings of fantastical libraries and still lifes with literary motifs to portraits of authors or paintings inspired by novels, short stories, and myths or biblical stories and even hand-made large-format albums and books. The oldest works in the catalogue date back to the 1980s, but it also features some of Barceló’s most recent pieces, including a series of paintings of shipwrecks named after poets who took their own lives. The bilingual publication also contains a brief biography, a bibliography, and two extensive essays. Enrique Juncosa’s curatorial text places the exhibited works in the broader context of Barceló’s oeuvre and traces the artist’s evolving relationship to literary influences over the decades. The essay by Monika Zgustová, a Czech writer based in Spain, focuses on the relationship between images and words, reading Barceló’s works as a unique way of “translating” literature into the language of visual art.