The son of Lluís Puig Barella, a painter and teacher at Barcelona's Escola del Treball, a grant from the French Institute in Barcelona allowed August Puig to study in Paris. He was one of the first Spanish artists to travel to the French capital after the Second World War. Apart from Paris, during the 1950s and 1960s he had prolonged stays in Algeria, Switzerland, Sweden and the United States, until, in the mid-1970s, he settled in the Baix Empordà. Puig's painting underwent two clearly marked moments: an early phase close to Surrealism, and a later one within abstraction. In the fifties and sixties, influenced by the poetics of Dau al Set (although he was never part of the group), and taking as referents such admired artists as Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee and Joan Miró, his painting became close to Fauvism and a dream-like language, with dynamic and very metamorphic creatures and beings. By the 1970s, he abandoned all the Surrealist motifs to embrace an informal abstraction of water and coloured stains, thanks to the technique of printing inks. From then on, Puig created spaces on the canvas with fluctuating liquid masses usually in a cold hue and a mysterious air that would become his signature trait until the 1990s.

Despite having a show at the French Institute in Barcelona with Club 49 (1956), and other spaces such as Club Coliseum (1962), during the 1950s and 1960s Puig exhibited mainly on the international circuit. After his first solo exhibition at the Colegio de España, Paris (1949), his work was shown in galleries in Zurich, Paris, Stockholm and Gothenburg. Of great significance is his presence in the group exhibition Modern Spanish Painting, organised by the Tate Gallery (1962). He exhibited at the Museu d'Art Contemporani, Ibiza, and represented Spain at the Sâo Paulo Biennial (1977). Retrospectives include those held at Museu de l'Empordà, Figueres (1990 and 2001), Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona (2000), Casa de Cultura de Girona (2010), and Museo Gustavo de Maeztu, Estella, Navarra (2014). His work is included in the collections of Fundació Juan March, Palma de Mallorca; Museu de l'Empordà, Figueres; Fundació Vila Casas, Barcelona; and MACBA, Barcelona.