Lluís Lleó (b. 1961, Barcelona, Spain) is a contemporary artist whose practice spans painting, sculpture, drawing, and installation. Raised in a family of painters and artisans, he developed an early fascination with the Romanesque frescoes of Catalonia, particularly those of the Vall de Boí, which continue to inform his approach to materiality, surface, and space. Largely self-taught, Lleó combines traditional fresco techniques with contemporary modes of abstraction, creating works that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture.
From 1989 to 2017, Lleó lived and worked in New York, where his engagement with American modernism, Abstract Expressionism, and Post-Minimalism expanded the architectural and spatial dimensions of his practice. Characterized by the integration of relief, geometry, and organic form, his works explore tensions between abstraction and figuration, order and spontaneity, presence and transparency. Drawing equally from Mediterranean visual traditions and contemporary artistic discourse, Lleó has developed a distinctive visual language that situates painting as both image and physical structure.
Lleó has exhibited extensively throughout Europe, the United States, Latin America, and Asia. His work has been presented at institutions and public sites including MARCO Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, Instituto Cervantes New York and Paris, and Park Avenue, New York, where his large-scale public installation Morpho's Nest in The Cadmium House was presented in 2017. His works are held in numerous public and private collections, including Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Fundació "la Caixa"; Es Baluard Museu d'Art Contemporani de Palma; and the Nagoya Art Museum, Japan.