Lives and works between Mallorca and Paris. He studied at the School of Arts and Crafts in Palma and, began to study fine arts at the University of Barcelona in 1974. At the end of the 1970s, he presented his first works, which were close to the conceptual spirit linked to the Taller Llunàtic group in Palma. A first trip to Paris introduced him to art brut and the abstract expressionism popular in the US.

By the nineteen-eighties Barceló’s figurative painting with expressionist nuances was clearly related to two internationally prominent artistic movements: the new German expressionist painting and the Italian transavantgarde. Together with Miguel Ángel Campano and José María Sicilia, Miquel Barceló is one of the most significant representatives of Spanish painting in the 1980s and his work has been identified with a group of artists who recovered the practice of painting based on a sensitivity to material. Barceló received the National Plastic Arts Prize from the Spanish Ministry of Culture in 1986, the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2003, the National Graphic Arts Prize in 2014, and was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Salamanca in 2017.

S.H.