Marcella Barceló (b. 1992 in Palma de Mallorca, Spain) is a painter and draughtswoman. She spent her childhood between the Balearic Islands and Paris. In 2015, she graduated from the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, earning the Prix du Dessin Contemporain the same year.

Barceló’s creative process is intuitive and unrestrained, as she paints and draws without prior sketches, freely blending colors and mediums – oil, acrylic, nail polish, glitter – bypassing academic technical constraints and conceptual discourses. She blends autofiction, fairy tales, mythological narratives, and ecofeminist ideas. Adolescent silhouettes mingle with fantastical, anachronistic flora and fauna, like carnivorous plants, giant flowers, and dinosaurs. Her influences include Henry Darger’s paintings, Hayao Miyazaki’s films, and Lewis Carroll’s novels.

In Japan, she discovered Shintoism, which resonated with her island childhood through its animistic worldview. This non-anthropocentric approach to life is evident in her work. Ukiyo-e, a Japanese art genre known for woodblock prints of everyday life, landscapes, and popular culture, significantly influences the artist. This influence appears in her landscapes, where sky and sea blend seamlessly. It also resonates with the concept of Mono No Aware – the bittersweet awareness of life’s fleeting beauty. Her work reflects this through stormy skies, solar eclipses, and volcanoes, symbolizing the constant threat and impermanence of the world.

Marcella Barceló’s works have been most recently exhibited at Terrada Art Complex, Tokyo (2023); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence (2023); Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles (2023); M.O.C.O. Panacée, Montpellier (2023); and Villa Emerige, Paris (2020), amongst others. Her works are part of several institutional collections, including Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; Ibiza Museum of Contemporary Art, Ibiza; Xiao Museum, Shanghai and Fondation d’Art Contemporain Daniel et Florence Guerlain, Paris.

MARCELLA BARCELÓ

SELECTED WORKS

Solsticio

Pol·len

Camí a casa

Adho