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Xavier Valls (Barcelona 1923 - 2006) : 

He made his first artistic steps beside the Catalan-Swiss sculptor Charles Collet, one of the promoters of Barcelona’s Escola Massana. Collet introduced him to Manolo Hugué, Joaquim Sunyer, Pau Roig, Miquel Villà i Josep Llorens i Artigas. During the post-war period, Valls was very close to painters Albert Ràfols Casamada and Maria Girona, with whom he developed an schematic and archaic figurative painting. 

At the same time he founded with Josep M. de Sucre, Collet and others, the Cercle Maillol in the newly created French Institute in Barcelona. Thanks to a scholarship granted by this institute, the young artist could travel to Paris in 1948, where he decided to stay for good. There he met painter Luis Fernández, and also Balthus -whose obituary he published in El País - and Alberto Giacometti. 

At the same time he collaborated with Fernand Léger in the elaboration of some stained-glass windows. During this period, Valls participated -and was awarded- in the renovating Salones de Octubre, organized in Barcelona. This was a key event in the renewal of modern art in Spain. 

In the III Bienal Hispanoamericana de Arte, held in Barcelona in 1955, Valls was awarded with the first prize to the best still life. In Paris he also participated in the Jeune Peinture Salons, le Salon des Independents and the Automne Salon. Gradually his paintings evolved, departing from Seurat and Morandi and then developing an extremely personal work which bloomed at the beginning of the 1960s. His paintings are very built, static and delicate. They have poetic nuances, they search for a sieved light which makes them mysterious, voluntarily situated beyond time and the avant-garde art. Xavier Valls still lifes, interiors and landscapes, with a repeated iconography, breath from a metaphysical, placid atmosphere through geometric, round shapes, smoothened by a subtle brushwork and pale and harmonious colours. 

Valls has been particularly successful in Paris, where he exhibited his works in Henriette Gomes Gallery and later in the prestigious Claude Bernard gallery, where he remained until the end. In 1981, the Montauban Ingres Museum organized a major retrospective exhibition and the French Government named him Chevalier des Arts et des lettres in 2000.