20th-21th Century Spanish

Since his childhood Arnau Alemany showed a heightened sensibility and interest for the arts. He began his training at the Conservatory of Sumptuary Arts Massana, and studied drawing and painting at the School of Arts and Crafts in Barcelona.

At a very early age he started to collaborate in an animation studio, and he later trained in a number of other disciplines, including photography, industrial design or sculpture, working as an assistant at the studio of Salvador Aulestia (1919-1994). For a while he combined both sculpture and painting, but from the 1970s onwards he devoted himself exclusively to the latter.

He had his first solo exhibition in his hometown of Barcelona in 1978. His work has been seen worldwide, in Paris, New York and San Francisco and in 1991 Alemany won a second prize at the Montecarlo Biennale.

Although his early style could largely be described as gestural abstraction with surrealist connotations, he later shifted to a hyperrealist style with urban subject matters.