Miquel Barceló studied at the Escolad'ArtsiOficis in Palma de Mallorca and in 1974 at the Escola de Belles Arts in Barcelona. In the late seventies he presented his first individual exhibitions, works which were close to the spirit of Conceptual Art. During a long stay in Paris he became interested in Art Brutand American Abstract Expressionism; in the early eighties he began to produce figurative painting along Expressionist lines. After seeing the exhibition «Otrasfiguraciones»(Fundació " la Caixa ", Madrid, 1981), Rudi Fuchs suggested he take part in Documenta VIIin Kassel (1982), which marked the beginning of his international recognition. Although the time he spent in different countries -Italy, Portugal, France, the United States and Mali- had a decisive influence on his work, we can see a recurrent treatment of some of the great themes and technical problems of classical painting -landscape, still life, the artist's studio or the portrait, perspective, colour, the treatment of light or composition-, constantly reformulating them according to essentially pictorial investigations. Barceló's painting is a painting of memory which includes autobiographical quotations in a boundless exploration of new forms of expression, in which he experiments with a wide range of materials and pictorial procedures. Together with José Maria Sicilia and Miguel ÁngelCampano, Barceló is one of the outstanding Spanish painters of the eighties and is identified with a young generation of artists who, early in the decade, returned to the practice of painting from a clearly marked matière orientedsensibility. He now divides his time between Paris, Mallorca and Segou (Mali).