Francesc Sillué is a painter by nature, one who lives to paint and to whom painting gives life, as demonstrated by the fact that, at the age of 88, he still gets up every day with the drive to paint.
Sillué's biography seems to be taken from a novel or film in which the popular image of a painter is described, a life of raw passion for his craft embracing an existence of unconventional creativity and freedom. As a young man, Francesc studied painting at the Llotja, the emblematic Academy of Fine Arts of Barcelona, birthplace of many famous artists, while at the same time working as an industrial engraver. At barely 20 years of age, Sillué moved to Paris, where he joined the community of painters at the legendary Place du Tertre, in Montmartre and where he would soon become on of the
most sought-after artists of American tourists who eagerly bought his work, work that created a school and which was copied by many of his colleagues. After only one year, several Parisian galleries were already exhibiting and selling his work.
Paris would be followed by London, where Francesc again achieved great success. He eventually moved to Norway, his wife's country of origin, where he also found great acceptance. It wasn’t until his return to Barcelona, some 20 years after he started painting that his work was first exhibited in the city of his origin.
Sillué has gone through several pictorial styles, from abstract materialism to cubism, passing through figuration, which has been and remains the backbone of his professional career. Figurative painting that draws on great names in Catalan and Spanish painting history like, to name just one, his admired Francesc Gimeno, a genius of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Currently, Sillué, far from settling with his considerable artistic achievements, has embarked on a laborious figurative style in which the images are fragmented in a kind of pixelation and which could well be defined as digital cubism.
Francesc Sillué is a natural painter; restless, demanding and tireless. At 88 years of age he continues to create and to delight his viewers with his range and brilliance.
Oil on canvas
Oil on canvas 80 x 80 cm
Oil on canvas
Oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm 2022
Oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm 2023
Oil on canvas 81 x 60 cm 2022