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This exhibition consisted of a substantial selection of the Déus (1981) series of paintings, which Ferran García Sevilla (Palma de Majorca, 1949) had presented for the first time in Barcelona’s now-defunct Galería Ciento in January 1982. Two months later, the series was again exhibited at Galería 4 Gats in Palma de Mallorca, this time under the title Illes a ca meva, and since then it had been stowed away and forgotten in the painter’s studio.

Déus consists of 61 acrylic paintings and one gouache on paper. The titles of each of the works suggestively mix several different languages – Catalan, Spanish, French, English, German, Italian, Latin, and Arabic – hinting at the artist’s fascination with other cultures. After starting out in conceptual art in the seventies, the sudden appearance of the Déus (Gods) paintings in the eighties where one of the first indications of what would become Ferran García Sevilla’s extensive and prolific pictorial career. The primitive spirit of these pagan gods was combined with the expressionist style in which they were painted.

Garcia Sevilla was one of the proponents of the so-called return to painting and the new figuration that marked the eighties, not only in Spain but also throughout Europe.