Born in Barcelona in 1940, Antoni Vives Fierro, at only 15 years old he begins his art studies at La Llotja. After working in Paris for one year, in 1962 he showed his first individual exhibition. Two years later he does it for the first time at the Sala Rovira, in Barcelona. Ever since, he has exhibited his works time and again, nationally and internationally and has always met with an unquestionable success both from art critics and public. His works can be seen in public collections such as the Lausanne Olympic Museum, (Switzerland)), the Athens Queen Sofia, (Greece), the Montevideo Museum of Contemporary Art, (Uruguay), or in the FC Barcelona Museum in The Fundación la Caixa de Pensions.
Vives Fierro is an unfaltering researcher who, through the restraint of his profession, reformulates the construal of the themes that captivate him. He is best known for his imprints about life in Barcelona, that extend from the most traditional bourgeois atmosphere (the crowded sessions at the Liceo Opera Theater or the romantic corners of Paseo de Gracia) to the street sceneries, where folklore and tradition happily blend (Los Encantes). His forty years of line of work have carried him to many different European settings (London, Paris, and Venice) where he has been able to renew not only his topics but also how to deal with them. From his very first stylistic ventures more tuned towards impressionist/expressionist traditions he has grown into a mixed technique whereby the use of collage and collage-related techniques has been acquiring more transcendence.
His present New York collection, which he shows at the Rusiñol Gallery, is greatly influenced by the change resulting from his impressions on Cuba. In La Habana he discovers color in its pure state: he gives up black scenes to shape an explosion of saturation, hue and contrast. Until I started painting my pictures on La Habana my painting was too black. Fundamentally as I had been mostly working in black settings. For instance, Barcelona is black. (Stylusart interview, 2001). In his last oils on New York, in spite of the fact that black is coming up once more, we can notice these evolutions through a deep contrast of reds, greens and blues.
On the other hand, the Cuban series imply a definite stake to fit in images from contemporary magazines with multiple allusions he shares with bystanders (from posters to logos). He creates an intertextual dialogue the meaning of which does not only occur as a consequence of the exhibited work, but, as it also happens in pop art, it is developed through symbols of our everyday occurrences. The New York series highlights this collage trend to the point of enunciating the composition. This awareness is strengthened by means of loose and very free strokes. The painted elements are purposely blurred while the best defined areas are the collages.
In an interview (Diari de Girona, March 7th 96), the artist demystifies this change: To make use of other materials and enhance colours has become more an anecdotic aspect than anything else. What actually matters is the intimate message of the work, which is still the same one with some small nuances; everything has to be said.
In the end, Vives Fierro boldly experiments, which is a peculiar trait of an artist who has managed to do away with any imposed obligations and has attained his maturity.
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