Serafí Sart Brunet was born in 1961 in Son Servera, Mallorca, Spain where he still lives and works. Sart Brunet studied at the Fine Arts School of Barcelona and soon came in contact with local artist circles. In 2000 he returned to Mallorca where he worked to make a living and to take care of his family while maintaining his art practice and participating in various exhibitions. A positive response and demand for his works allowed him to stop working in 2010 and focus fully on painting and sculpture.
Mallorca’s rocky landscape and the sea offer a starting point for Sart Brunet’s work that also draws on his interests in Talayotic architecture, poetry and classical literature. Sart Brunet describes himself as an observer who paints in plein air daily and his large format tellurian landscapes convey an organic and timeless quality.
Sart Brunet incorporates natural and discarded materials such as papier-mâché, wood, soil, sand, strings, clay, metal, fabrics, coal, additions of dried plants and discarded books. Mixed together with paint, the materials result in encrusted surfaces and thick layers of impasto. These are combined with drippings, gestural brushstrokes and canvas perforations to contribute to an organic quality, very much in a neo-expressionist style.
This use of simple materials recalls arte povera artists who used such materials to address life and allude to European mythology and cultural history, reflecting on the present through stories from the past. In the same way, Sart Brunet’s interest in the heritage and origins of Mallorcan culture and the archaeological sites of the island is evident.
Sart Brunet’s organic works are in constant transformation: a tree that sprouts from books or a pomegranate that emerges from canvas. The paintings and sculptures deal with the passage of time and the cycles of life and death.
By Agustina Strüngmann, independent curator
