Angel Bofarull

Angel Bofarull - The Wax Image, Collage, 18 x 11 cm, 1998.

Técnica: Collage on cover of a book

Biografía del Artista:

Ángel Bofarull Viladàs (Barcelona, ​​1957) has been considered by critics as one of the best collagists in our country. His early studies in Barcelona were of no importance to him, but his admission to the Montessori school in the United States in 1973 was, where he discovered the work of Duchamp and the Moma in New York. He obtained a degree in Art History from the University of Barcelona. A solitary artist, he left Barcelona to “hide in the centre of Valencia” (according to critic Miguel Fernández-Cid) and spend ten years living in the rustic village of Ribaroja d´Ebre. Since 2015 he has lived in the south of France and Barcelona. . Since the 1980s he has been making collages, drawings and objects. His work, indebted to Dada, Surrealism and his admired Joseph Cornell, is autobiographical, although always avoiding anecdotes. In both collages and objects, he usually chooses images from the Baroque, the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th century and objects from these periods, in which he is a true expert. His memories of the family farmhouse in the Plana d'Urgell (Lérida) are reflected in his work, as well as the world described in the works of the Brontë sisters, of Balzac's Primo Pons, or of the Russian poet Tyutchev. He also recognises himself in Tolstoy's diaries, in the works of Walt Whitman, in those of Turgenev, in those of Jean Genet, in those of René Crevel or in those of Robert Walser. Some old collages are almost like collage poems, due to the inclusion of words or writings, while others, due to their conceptual nature, evoke those of Francis Picabia. And others, finally, give us a glimpse into the world of birds and children, into the smile or melancholy of ancient women, mysteriously seductive.