Cesc Abad

I was born in Barcelona in 1973, the only son of a family dedicated to the family business. At age of fifteen I was expelled from school and it is during this time that I started being attracted to visual arts, especially painting.

My father paid for my first workshop under the condition of working in his local business. During these first few years I experimented with art and presented it in different art galleries. Everything was going well until my father suddenly died when I was 21 years old. Without even having time to think about it, I found myself at the head of  my father’s business. This deeply influenced my way of understanding art, the world and even myself.

I worked as a manager of this business, always using creativity to solve any problems that we could face. During my time in management, I created more than ten successful companies in different fields (electronics, industrial refrigeration, air conditioning, sports and fashion).
In this period I felt  that my passion for painting made me weak in the eyes of my business colleagues, so I decided to hide it. Having enough free time and savings, I decided to install a large workshop at work in the strictest secrecy.

It was at my company’s headquarters just next to my office. There was a door, which lead directly to my art workshop. This is where I experimented non-stop with different materials and techniques (painting, photography, film, ceramics etc …), hardly ever exhibiting my work to anyone.

This space was nicknamed “the wall” by my employees. No one knew what was behind the door, not even my closest colleagues. I only shared it with some people of my family.
Despite not having the need to sell my work and not having resource limits, I had to hide my creations from prying eyes and had more and more business activity. So, all of this began to take a toll on me.

After living a double life for the most part of twenty years, I decided to sell my companies in 2016 and dedicate myself exclusively to creating pieces of art. Therefore, I moved to a more modest studio and began to prepare work to show the world. I decide that already it is not a secret.