Artists +


Hours

Valls

1

BIOGRAPHY OF XAVIER VALLS:
Xavier Valls was born in Horta (Barcelona) in 1923 and died in the same city in 2006. He spent his childhood and adolescence in Horta, where he learned to paint from life with the Swiss sculptor Charles Collet, who became his only teacher.

In 1949, he traveled to Paris and collaborated with Léger in the realization of stained glass windows. Valls shared a circle of friends with Luis Fernandez in the café Mabillon gathering, along with figures such as Tristan Tzara, Salomon, Zervos and Giacometti. During this period, he had the same dealer as Balthus and his work, starting from an initial enthusiasm for cubism and constructivism, evolved towards abstraction to return in 1970 to a figuration of simple and close evocations. His ascetic compositions are reminiscent of Zurbarán, insisting on the debate between rigor and mystery, tension and measure. He uses a thin painting made of light, where color sifts a minimal geometric structure. Valls, with a passion analogous to Morandi’s for still lifes, develops a concise compositional architecture, dispensing with scenography, in which everything represented is at once close and disturbing, ordered and at rest.

Among the numerous solo exhibitions of Xavier Valls, we can highlight those held at the Galería Theo, Madrid (1974), Galería Henriette Gomes, Paris (1979), Galerie Claude Bernard, Paris (1981), and his first major retrospective organized at the Musée Ingres in Montauban (1981).

His work is present in museums such as the Museum of Modern Art of Barcelona (MACBA), the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Lanzarote and the Font National d’Art Contemporain in Paris, among others.

PAYPAL
MRV
Facebook  Twiter  Pinterest  Google Maps