Alfons Borrell

Alfons Borrell (Spain, 1931-2020) Born in Barcelona in 1931 but settled in Sabadell since childhood, Alfons Borrell trained in the 1950s with Hermen Anglada Camarasa in Mallorca and at the Escola de Belles Arts in Barcelona. In 1960, he joined Grup Gallot, a collective created in Sabadell that practiced actions halfway between action painting and surrealist automatism, questioning 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 consolidated as an expressive corpus of great intensity and solidity. Starting from symmetries and gestural abstractions, his work has undergone a progressive simplification. With large monochrome surfaces—color plays a structural role in Borrell's work—often centered on a single geometric figure or a graphic sign or annotation, the lyricism and austerity of this painting bring it closer to an interior or introspective landscape than to a desire for representation.