Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
One of the most creative figurative painters of today, Joan Beltran
Bofill was born near Barcelona, Spain in 1934 and has lived in
Catalonia all of his life. He studied at the Escuela Superior de
Artes de San Jordi and then Escuala de Artes y Oficio Casa Lonja where
several artists of the Catalan School, including Picasso, had also
studied.
While based in Mallorca during his military service, he
met the great Catalan painter, Anglada Camarasa, who was an inspiration
to him. He also came face to face with the Mallorcan landscape, which
has since had such a significant influence on his work. One of the
paintings of that period won a prize in the First Barcelona Press
Exhibition and was purchased by The Barcelona Museum.
With a
solid background in drawing, colour theory, and composition, Bofill set
out to pursue a career in art in 1972, and has since devoted himself
entirely to painting. His entire professional life has really
been an exploration of the effect of light in Mediterranean
culture. The idea of space and the use of filtered light
exemplify his work today. Moreover, he brings to his art a
lifelong interest in classical figure painting as he champions the
rebirth of beauty.
Mallorca, where much of his painting is done,
provides the idyllic conditions that he reflects so masterfully in his
compositions. Travel, too, has played an important part in his
development. The museums of Madrid enabled him to study Goya, Rubens,
Bosch, Dürer and Boticelli, to mention a few of the masters he admires.
Visits to Paris and London further enlarged his knowledge of past and
present masters.
In viewing Bofill’s paintings, it is evident
that he is answering a challenge, fighting a duel with light. In his
endeavours to give it shape and to make it vibrate on his canvas, he
ungrudgingly lavishes all his faculties, all his technical resources
that he has acquired over the years.
Dating back to 1972, Bofill
has had one-man exhibitions in Palma, Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid,
Monaco, Paris, New York, Chicago, Palm Beach and Tokyo.
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