Modest Cuixart grew up in a family of doctors and pharmacists, in a cultured environment. He began a career in medicine, although he abandoned it in 1946 to devote himself to painting, his true vocation. Together with his cousin Antoni Tàpies, he met Joan Brossa, Joan Ponç, the philosopher Arnau Puig and Joan Tharrats, with whom he founded the magazine Dau al Set in 1948.
Praised by the world’s most prestigious critics as a true renovator of Informalism on an international scale, he won the most coveted prizes: the Gold Medal at the prestigious Swiss Prize for Abstract Painting and the Grand Prix for Painting at the V Biennial of São Paulo. He took part in the most important international events and exhibited in the main museums and galleries.
In the early sixties he abandoned informalism, influenced by the thought of Bertold Brecht, he felt the impulse of what is human and of the object. He then embarked on a highly original intellectualist phase, with organic, sinister and erotic features, with which he triumphed in New York, and in which he combined material Informalism with ink graphics and soft colours.