Comedor Barcelona

Carlos Nadal was born in Paris in 1917. Within four years, his family moved to Barcelona.

Nadal’s father owned a commercial design workshop. There he began to work as an apprentice and learned to paint in his early teens. He took art classes at a school on Barcelona’s Calle Caspe. In 1935 Nadal won three awards, including an award from the Watercolors Association of Barcelona, ​​the Mural Composition Count Lavern and the Masriera prize. A year later, Nadal received a scholarship from the Barcelona City Council and because of which he was able to attend the Escola Superior de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi.

Nadal exhibited for the first time in a collective exhibition at the Galeries Dalmau in 1941, and he had his first solo exhibition at La Pinacoteca in Barcelona in 1944. In 1946 the Barcelona City Council again granted him a scholarship to continue his education in Paris at École des Beaux-Arts. In the French capital, he took part in the Autumn Salons.

In 1948 Nadal married the Belgian sculptor Flore Joris and moved to live in Belgium. Here, he stated that he discovered the effects of light on painting and the use of color that would already be a distinctive sign of his work. The influence of Fauvism on Nadal’s paintings was remarkably clear. There was continuous success for the artist in Belgium and he remained very active, exhibiting there as well as in France, Spain, Amsterdam and the United States. His subjects were varied and included beaches, urban landscapes, natural landscapes, seascapes and more.

In 1954 Nadal exhibited with great success at Kunstverein Düsseldorf and at the Royal Academy in London, and won the painting prize at the International SPA Contest. During the same year, he met Pablo Picasso on the Côte d'Azur and began a great friendship with the artist. Nadal’s work can be found in the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, the Royal Museum of Brussels and more.

Find a collection of Carlos Nadal art on 1stDibs.

(Biography provided by Galeria Luis Carvajal)

Figurative art, as opposed to abstract art, retains features from the observable world in its representational depictions of subject matter. Most commonly, figurative paintings reference and explore the human body, but they can also include landscapes, architecture, plants and animals — all portrayed with realism.

While the oldest figurative art dates back tens of thousands of years to cave wall paintings, figurative works made from observation became especially prominent in the early Renaissance. Artists like Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters created naturalistic representations of their subjects.

Pablo Picasso is lauded for laying the foundation for modern figurative art in the 1920s. Although abstracted, this work held a strong connection to representing people and other subjects. Other famous figurative artists include Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Figurative art in the 20th century would span such diverse genres as Expressionism, Pop art and Surrealism.

Today, a number of figural artists — such as Sedrick Huckaby, Daisy Patton and Eileen Cooper — are making art that uses the human body as its subject.

Because figurative art represents subjects from the real world, natural colors are common in these paintings. A piece of figurative art can be an exciting starting point for setting a tone and creating a color palette in a room.

Browse an extensive collection of figurative paintings on 1stDibs.