Annette Barcelo

Critical text

For over fifty years, Annette Barcelo (b. 1943, Basel) has followed her unique artistic path, giving shape to her daydreams and nightmares through drawings, etchings, and paintings. Barcelo is fascinated by inner worlds and liminal spaces that are invisible to us. Her works are dialogues with her soul or other souls around her, which she calls “soul beings”. Archaic-looking female figures interact with hybrid or animal beings in all emotional aspects of life in her drawings and paintings. Barcelo loves her creatures and maintains a close relationship with light and shadow beings. Her works depict transitional scenarios at the threshold of life and death. Birth is a central theme, often depicted with a bathtub, which represents an intimate place where she communicates with other beings while we, the viewers, are intruders observing. For Barcelo, the bathtub, as well as boats, have a protective function, while water symbolizes transfer and the possibility of transitioning to another world. She enjoys building narratives that reveal much about beauty, such as flower images or animals, which play an active and equal role in her latest works. What makes Barcelo’s work special is her fearlessness of the shadows of our being, embracing them powerfully and including them in her life.

Text by Heike Munder

The artist’s voice

I paint what I feel. I am not planning anything beforehand but let my hand and my mind wonder. This process gives me great pleasure and I cannot stop doing what I love most.