“Three free open calls for artists in Barcelona — photography and visual arts grants worth over 15,000 € — with deadlines from 31 August to 30 September 2026.”
4 min readAug 21, 2026
Art journal from Barcelona
Long interviews with artists in Barcelona, photographed in their studios and written in house. Painters, sculptors, illustrators and musicians working in the city and across Catalonia, on materials, on money, and on the years a body of work took to finish. Nobody lands on this page by uploading something.
Plenty of the artists here did not grow up in Barcelona. They arrived from Italy, France, Venezuela, set up a studio in a Poblenou unit or a ground floor in Gràcia, and stayed. That turns up in the interviews: what it means to work in a city where the rent on a studio decides how big the work can be.
Each piece names the artist it is about and carries photographs of the work, so the name alone is enough to search out the rest of it here, no account required. Alongside the interviews there are occasional roundups of open calls in Catalonia, carrying the deadlines that were current on the day they went up.
The interview language depends on who is on the other side of the table: Catalan, Spanish, English. Pieces go up when they are finished rather than on a weekly slot, and then they stay put. The list reads as an archive rather than a news feed, which is the useful shape when you are looking for one particular person.
Journal · Painting
barcelona
Valentina Brostean: The Alchemy of Identity, Transformation, and the Mediterranean Muse
“Serbian-born, Barcelona-based painter Valentina Brostean on trading commercial design for pure expression, her 'alchemical' blank-canvas process, and the personal mythology of strong feminine figures and humanoid guardians that fills her house-museum.”
4 min readJul 25, 2026
“Flamenco guitarist, composer and Gran Gala Flamenco musical director Tati Amaya — great-nephew of Carmen Amaya — on returning to his family's Barcelona, why silence is the loudest sound on stage, and how a glance keeps a whole company improvising as one.”
5 min readAug 7, 2026
“Barcelona sculptor Samuel Salcedo on trading canvas for iron and concrete, the memory held in rust, and why getting 'lost a little bit everywhere' is his creative method.”
4 min readJul 31, 2026
“French sculptor Marc Sparfel on how Barcelona's discarded street furniture sparked his reinvention — from tribal-inspired wooden masks to abstract 'architectonical landscapes' built on pure energy and intuition.”
3 min readJul 23, 2026
“Barcelona-based abstract sculptor Vanesa Muñoz on mutating the chaos of the world into aesthetic order, working as a 'sculptor of concepts' in cables, wood and glass, and why creating the beautifully useless is a radical act.”
3 min readAug 4, 2026
“Barcelona painter Ernest Compta Llinàs on reinventing himself after the 2008 crisis, an expressive portrait style that arrived fully formed, and why every imaginary woman he paints is really a self-portrait.”
4 min readJul 27, 2026
“Barcelona-based French artist Hélène Panier on splitting her life between biotech engineering and drawing, why her women look calm outside and feel deep keys of emotions within, and how diluted acrylic on raw canvas lets the fabric drink the pigment.”
4 min readAug 12, 2026
“Italian-born, Barcelona-based painter Karenina Fabrizzi on the studio she calls her cave, a nomadic childhood that turned drawing into sanctuary, and why her gold-leaf horses whisper freedom instead of shouting it.”
6 min readAug 17, 2026
“Venezuelan-born, Barcelona-based artist Felix Zilinskas on turning the periscope inward, why home is portable rather than built of brick, and the hi-fi creative bar he opened in Gràcia to make room for the pause.”
5 min readAug 19, 2026
Art journal from Barcelona
Free Artist Portfolio in a Real Art Community
“Create your free Artist Page, showcase your work, share events, follow grants and open calls, and join Artistivo's international art community.”
20 min readSep 4, 2026