The Alchemy of Matter

Barcelona, 1948. A group of young rebels gathers to challenge a barren cultural landscape. Modest Cuixart joins Joan Brossa, Joan Ponç, Antoni Tàpies, Joan-Josep Tharrats, and A. Puig to launch the Dau al Set magazine. They seek the magical and mysterious side of reality. The early years are defined by a search for the unexpected. Ink drawings, watercolours, and oils form abstract compositions that lean into geometric automatism. These works carry the weight of post-war ruins, utilizing debris, collages, and incised supports to build enigmatic landscapes and celestial figures.

The mid-1950s bring a shift toward the physical. During his Lyon period, Cuixart enters a dense informalist cycle. He attacks his supports, burning or incising wood to create texture. He glues objects directly onto the surface, developing what are known as heteroplastic constructions. The surfaces begin to shimmer with metallic iridescence—gold, silver, and copper. This is a period of intense material experimentation where the artist uses dripping and heavy textures to achieve a personal alchemy. In 1959, this exploration reaches an international peak at the São Paulo Biennial.

The Figure and the Grotesque

As the 1960s arrive, the focus shifts from pure matter to more aggressive themes. The artist addresses sexual taboos with daring relief work. By 1963, a sense of existential anguish manifests in his famous lacerated dolls. These objects are no longer just textures; they are symbols of trauma. This tension between the material and the figurative continues into the late sixties, where an erotic-magical series combines calligraphic drawing with heavy relief.

The 1970s introduce a period of expressionist deformation. The human figure appears, but it is distorted and subjected to a baroque, almost hedonistic energy. This phase carries a sharp edge of satire. He uses a language that is simultaneously surreal and pathetic to mock hypocrisy and foolishness. Faces and bodies appear with implausible proportions, possessing a strange beauty despite their monstrous appearance. These works evoke the sinister tradition of Goya, where anxious spectres and distorted anatomy proclaim the inevitability of death.

By the 1980s, the style undergoes another transformation. The work becomes coarser, characterized by chromatic stridency. Large, pompous headdresses and figures of women dominate the canvas. The artist moves through these various stages—from the dream-like surrealism of his youth to the heavy, satirical figures of his later years—always seeking to escape his own previous successes.