Of the current generation of Spanish painters Miquel Barceló has achieved most recognition internationally, and it is paradoxical that he has had to wait until now for a one-man show in Madrid. Since its first appearance in 1981 the work of this Majorcan artist—the only Spanish representative in Documenta 7—has become increasingly pictorial, increasingly robust. It has gradually given up the crudely humorous, polymorphous, fragmented images of the earlier paintings, with their gamut of human figures, objects, and animals, for a greater serenity. Barceló’s own immediate environment and his own