Sergi Barnils Spain, b. 1954
Sergi Barnils was born in Bata, capital of Equatorial Guinea, in 1954. He lives and works in Barcelona and Sant Cugat del Vallès, Spain.
The Barnils family returned to Catalonia in 1956, when the territory of the Spanish colony became a province in the Gulf of Guinea. Sergio Barnils demonstrated great talent as a painter from an early age, which he cultivated by frequenting the studio of painter Nolasc Vals beginning in 1975 and the school of fine arts in Barcelona from 1988.
After a long apprenticeship in which he addressed the most important currents in contemporary art (from the Impressionists to Cézanne, and from Masson to abstract art), Barnils came to his own highly personal and intellectual synthesis, combining the colours and evocations of the Catalonian tradition with a primordial form of painting laden with penetrating symbols and morbid visions.
His initial love of landscape painting, setting aside the descriptive modes of representation, became pure spatial synthesis with a bold, penetrating, subtle and incisive mark, preferably practiced using the ancient and highly refined encausto technique of painting involving use of fire and wax, employed by the ancient Greeks and Romans. Drawing dialogues with painting, and geometry is married with the stratification of matter, in images which, however abstract, combine with life in becoming to express joy and beauty. Barnils conceives of his work as completed material reflecting on the human condition.
As well as in Spain, Sergi Barnils’ work has been successful in Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy, where he has exhibited since 1995.
