Born in Havana in 1949, Carlos Boix has lived in Geneva since 2013 after having lived in Stockholm, Algiers, Tunis, Paris and Madrid.
At 18 he won the first prize at the Havana Drawing Fair. When he was not going to smoke “culebras” in the pineapple fields, he went to the workshops of René Portocarrero (1912-1986) and Mariano Rodriguez (1912-1990). In 74, alongside them, he participated in the creation of a collective fresco at the request of Fidel Castro. He then worked at the Caiman Bearded (El Caimàn Barbudo), a literary review whose surrealist title foreshadows the great jubilation of the Boixian Work.
The Swedish Boix has dragged its pots of colors and its Italian costumes on four continents, spreading a wake of personal exhibitions in the most recommendable galleries and accumulating a repertoire of collectors acquired by its serial graphics, its sparkling palette and its imagination without taboo. Stockholm, Algiers, Paris, Carthage, Geneva were the successive settings of his odyssey. Alain Jouffroy, José Pierre, Eduardo Manet, Fernando Arrabal, Olle Granath and Régis Debray wrote on his painting.
Vivacious and hardworking, epicurean and Stakhanovist, Boix is the paradoxical fruit of vital energy and sacred fire.
His works are found in public and private collections in many European countries, in the USA, as well as in Cuba, Colombia and Venezuela.
From 1984 to 2015, more than thirty exhibitions were dedicated to him in Italy, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Poland, Cuba, Tunisia and several prices were devoted to him for his painting.
Extracts from the portrait of Franck Chaix de Lavarène
“Carlos Boix paints insolently. Where many artists hesitate, he advances, face uncovered, in the relentless denunciation of a world that is racing.
His gaze delves into the flaws of consumer society, to denounce its excesses. Served by a jubilant pleasure of the gesture, it traces interlaces of allusive signs and symbols, in a visual delirium where a few words accompany each painting.
In this game where our certainties are quickly lost, he weaves incongruous bonds which are never innocent. Not neglecting humor and derision, Boix dazzles us with the dexterity of his line. There is music in this painting, Cuba and the Caribbean are never far away in the frenzied world of the painter, who amazes us with color.
The excess of the subject is the only answer to this crazy acceleration of the World.
The artist often uses the metaphor to cry out his stupor. His narratives are enriched with innumerable details, born of a rich imagination, admirably served by the drawing and the color.
Boix’s brutality is actually just energy. His natural lyricism allows him to reinvent a world that happily leads us on back roads. This poetic wandering, always inventive, often dazzling, exorcises our fears.
Boix’s insolence fascinates us because it allows us to transcend human drama. ”
Gérard Gamand, editor-in-chief of Azart magazine