SwissArtGallery · Documented identity

Modest Cuixart

Modest Cuixart’s career is marked by several shifts: from his adoption of Art Informel in Lyon to an expression closer to human reality in the early 1960s, and then to an exploration of nature and abstraction in the 1990s. Born in Barcelona in 1925, the Spanish painter died in Palamós in 2007.

He made his first drawings and paintings in 1941, in an expressionist-inspired vein, and took part in his first group exhibition in Barcelona in 1944, where he received first prize. In September 1948, he co-founded the surrealist and Dadaist journal Dau al Set with Joan Brossa, Joan Ponç, Antoni Tàpies and Joan-Josep Tharrats. A scholarship awarded following an exhibition at the Institut français enabled him to travel to Paris with Antoni Tàpies in 1951, and then to spend several months in Lyon. There he continued painting, created costumes and theatre sets, and adopted Art Informel. In 1956, Marcel Michaud exhibited his work, bringing Cuixart into contact with the Lyon avant-garde.

In the early 1960s, Cuixart gradually moved away from Informalism towards an expression described as more vehement and closer to human reality. The series Nins sense nom, with its compositions of dolls tortured on the canvas, bears witness to this; a 1963 work from the series is made using collage and mixed media on canvas. An untitled work from 1959, in turn, is described as a mixed-media work combining oil and metallic paint, and is signed and dated on the reverse. In the 1990s, a vision of nature emerges in his work; it then moves closer to abstraction and turns towards a cosmic perspective.

This profile brings together identity references for Modest Cuixart and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.

3 references are documented at Germann. Each record links to its source; the amounts are not a general valuation of the artist’s work.

Works recorded at auction

Germann

Untitled, 1959

Mixed media: oil and metallic paint.

Original catalogue wording

Ohne Titel, 1959
Mischtechnik: Öl und Metallfarbe.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Germann

Untitled, 1959

Mischtechnik. Öl und Metallfarbe.

Original catalogue wording

Ohne Titel, 1959
Mischtechnik. Öl und Metallfarbe.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Germann

Untitled, 1958

Mischtechnik. Öl und Metallfarbe.

Original catalogue wording

Ohne Titel, 1958
Mischtechnik. Öl und Metallfarbe.

Date to be documented

Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed

View the lot at the auction house ↗

Sources and references

• Reference record
• LoC · Reference link only; institutional text and images are not reproduced.
• MoMA · CC0
• Documentary source
• Documentary source
• Documentary source

SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
Documentation updated : 2026-10-19