Biography – By Mateu Bauzá

Toni Barrero, a painter from the Sóller Valley in Mallorca, is an artist who is completely dedicated to painting. Within the variety of languages displayed in the current artistic landscape, Barrero shows a clear choice: abstract painting with a creative reinterpretation of American Abstract Expressionism, between colour field painting and action painting. His format is European, more like that of Morandi or Soutine than the larger, more extensive format of De Kooning.

Barrero’s colours are clearly Mediterranean, his vision strongly influenced by his surroundings, the village of Sóller, which is chromatically exuberant: blues, emerald greens, purples and whites with the luminosity and vibrancy of the South. His gesture, which totally or partially dominates the space, always has a structural, compositional value: a reasoned intuition, a spontaneous but not wild gesture.

These paintings exude a harmony that the painter internalises and returns to the canvas, a joy that incites empathy in the viewer.