Roots, Matter, and the Contemporary Pulse of Catalan Art
Catalunya has long been a fertile ground for artistic practice, with a scene shaped by experimentation, conceptual rigor, and a deep relationship to language, landscape, and political context. Figures such as Joan Miró’s radical imagination and symbolic language laid crucial foundations for later generations of artists working in Catalunya. From internationally renowned figures to artists redefining the present moment, Catalan contemporary art reflects a strong commitment to questioning how we live, communicate, and relate to the world.
Material, Matter, and Presence
Artists such as Antoni Tàpies, Miquel Barceló, and Jaume Plensa have brought Catalan art to an international stage through deeply material and sensory practices. Their work explores matter, gesture, and the human presence — whether through painting, sculpture, or monumental public art — and has expanded the possibilities of how form can hold meaning.
Conceptual Art and Critical Thought
Catalunya is especially known for its strong conceptual tradition. Artists like Antoni Muntadas, Ignasi Aballí, and Francesc Torres use systems, language, media, and absence to examine power structures, perception, and collective memory. Their practices often blur the boundaries between art, research, and social critique.
Landscape, Language, and Poetics
The relationship between territory and imagination is central to artists such as Perejaume, whose work moves between painting, poetry, and thought, and Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, whose research-based practice connects ecology, perception, and the natural world. These artists propose ways of thinking with — rather than about — landscape.
Body, Voice, and Feminist Perspectives
Contemporary Catalan art has also been shaped by practices that place the body, voice, and lived experience at the center. Artists like Eulàlia Valldosera, Laia Estruch, Lúa Coderch, Rosa Tharrats, and Núria Güell work across installation, performance, sound, and social intervention to explore care, intimacy, ritual, and ethics from a critical and feminist perspective.
Image, Fiction, and Reality
In photography and image-based practices, artists such as Joan Fontcuberta and Laia Abril have challenged the notion of truth, documentary, and representation. Through archives, research, and narrative construction, their work questions how images shape belief, memory, and power.
A Living Context
Rather than a closed canon, contemporary art in Catalunya is best understood as an evolving ecosystem — one that values process, experimentation, and dialogue. Many artists work across disciplines, collaborate internationally, and maintain strong ties to local contexts and independent spaces.
At Can Silvestre, this understanding informs our approach to artistic residencies: offering time, space, and community for practices that are thoughtful, process-based, and connected to the present moment. We see residencies not as production sites alone, but as places for research, reflection, and meaningful exchange.
Contemporary art, after all, is not only about what is made — but about how, where, and why it comes into being.