Perejaume led the development of experimental and conceptual art from the 1980s on, both in the field of visual arts and of poetry and essays. During an initial stage dedicated to painting, mainly in the second half of the 1970s, Pere Jaume Borrell I Guinart, known as Perejaume, combined references in his work to German Romantic landscape painting with clear Surrealist roots, mediated through the influences of artists and authors including J. V.  Foix, Josep Maria Jujol, Joan Miró and Joan Brossa. He made the Catalan culture and landscape the central focus of his works from then onwards. In the 1980s he started to expand his pictorial work with the use of other media such as photography, sculpture, installation, video and practices associated with land art. Perejaume deconstructs traditional media and genres in his works to reflect on the limits of representation, the mechanisms for perceiving and interpreting reality and the need to re-establish a direct relationship with nature and the land, highlighting cultural barriers and representation. Modelling scenes, un-painting and Oism are different strategies that Perejaume uses in his work for this purpose. At the same time, he has been prolific as an author, writing essays including Oïsme (Proa, 1998) and L’obra i la por (Galaxia Gutenberg, 2007) and poetry such as Obreda (Empúries, 2003) and Pagèsiques (Ediciones 62, 2011), which are no less important than his visual oeuvre. In 1998 he was commissioned to paint the ceilings of the Liceu Opera House auditorium in Barcelona when it was rebuilt.

Since his first solo show at the Sant Pol de Mar Museum (Barcelona, 1974), his work has been exhibited at venues including the Joan Miró Foundation (Barcelona, 1982, 1991 and 2007); the Centre regional d’art contemporain Midi-Pyrénées (Toulouse, France, 1987); the Pilar i Joan Miró Foundation (Palma, 1994); and the Centre for Contemporary Art of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela, 1996). His most important exhibitions also include retrospectives at the Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum (1999) and La Pedrera (Barcelona, 2005 and 2011); Artium – Museum of Contemporary Art of the Basque Country (2003) (an exhibition which was then taken to Los Condes de Gabia Palace Exhibition Centre (Granada, 2004)); and Es Baluard (Palma, 2006). He has also taken part in events such as the São Paulo (1992), Sydney (1992) and Venice (2005) Biennials and Prospect 1 (New Orleans, United States, 2008). Perejaume has received the National Visual Arts Prize of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (2005) and the National Award for Plastic Arts of the Spanish Culture Ministry (2006). In 2014 he curated the ‘Maniobra de Perejaume’ [‘Perejaume Manoeuvre’] exhibition at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona). In 2017 he was awarded the GAC Prize, organised by the art galleries of Catalonia.

Roberto Díaz