Amélia Riera

She attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. In the 1960s, she actively participated in Catalan artistic life, founding the group ‘Ciclo de Arte Hoy’ in 1962, with which she set up Man (Muestras de Arte Nuevo) and the ‘International Drawing Prize’. Although the group also disbanded some time later, the artist continued throughout the 1960s and 1970s to be involved in initiatives linked to this acronym.
Her first solo exhibition was in 1963 at the Belarte Gallery. In the second half of the 1960s, her painting became increasingly geometric, solemn, almost hieratic: the elements of figuration, linked to erotic fantasies and mournful scenarios, seemed to light up with surrealist echoes. In 1966 she received an award at the Salón Femenino de Arte Actual in Barcelona and three years later exhibited in Italy, at the Galleria Il Giorgio in Milan. In the same period, she also gained public recognition with her graphic production (Award of the ‘Ancora Graphic Art Competition’, 1968) In the early 1980s, she devoted herself to illustration, with the publication of Joan Perucho’s poems entitled Poemas para un libro de estampas de Amélia Riera, 1984.
In the 1990s, she took part in important group exhibitions that established her fame as a Catalan artist: Informalisme a Catalunya, of 1990, at the Centro D’Art Santa Mónica, Barcelona, Art Catalá Contemporanei of 1990, at the Palau dels Reis de Mallorca in Palma de Mallorca, 17 Autors of 1993, at the Tecla Sala of the Hospitalet de Llobregat in Barcelona. Here, three years later, a major retrospective on the artist was staged. Her works can be found at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Barcelona.