Antoni Pitxot (;

Figueres Figueres (; ) is the capital city of Alt Empordà county, in the Girona region, Catalonia, Spain. The town is the birthplace of artist Salvador Dalí, and houses the Dalí Theatre and Museum, a large museum designed by Dalí himself which att ...

Girona Girona (; ) is the capital city of the Province of Girona in the autonomous community of Catalonia, Spain, at the confluence of the Ter, Onyar, Galligants, and Güell rivers. The city had an official population of 106,476 in 2024, but the p ...

, January 5, 1934 – June 12, 2015) was a Spanish Catalan painter and a longtime friend and collaborator of

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (11 May 190423 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí ( ; ; ), was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, ...

. Pitxot was born into a family with many artists in its ranks, among them, his uncle Ramon Pichot. He began studying drawing at the age of thirteen, and he exhibited regularly in

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

Bilbao Bilbao is a city in northern Spain, the largest city in the Provinces of Spain, province of Biscay and in the Basque Country (greater region), Basque Country as a whole. It is also the largest city proper in northern Spain. Bilbao is the List o ...

, Barcelona, and

Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...

in his twenties and thirties, winning many prizes, including the Gold Medal painting prize in Barcelona's La Punyalada competition in 1965. At the beginning of the 1960s, he was a close friend of the French painter

Maurice Boitel Maurice Boitel (July 31, 1919 – August 11, 2007) was a French painter. Artistic life Boitel belonged to the art movement called "La Jeune Peinture" ("Young Picture") of the School of Paris,The School of Paris (1945–1965) by Lydia Harambourg. ...

, who painted many pictures on the Pitxot family's property in Cadaqués, a small port town on the

Mediterranean Sea The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern Eur ...

near the French border, that was also painted by

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

and

André Derain André Derain (, ; 10 June 1880 – 8 September 1954) was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse. In 2025, all of Derain’s work entered the public domain in the United States. Life and career Early ...

. In 1966, Pitxot took up permanent residence in Cadaqués, where his family had owned a summer house since the end of the 19th century. He began to experiment with

surrealism Surrealism is an art movement, art and cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists aimed to allow the unconscious mind to express itself, often resulting in the depiction of illogical or dreamlike s ...

: in particular, he became focused on anthropomorphic figures composed of the stones that lined the seashores near his home. Pitxot worked in a unique way: he would build sculptures from stones, and then paint those sculptures in oil. Much of Pixtot's work is concerned with allegory and myth, including the figure of

Mnemosyne In Greek mythology and ancient Greek religion, Mnemosyne (; , ) is the goddess of memory and the mother of the nine Muses by her nephew Zeus. In the Greek tradition, Mnemosyne is one of the Titans, the twelve divine children of the earth-godde ...

, the mother of the nine

muse In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, the Muses (, ) were the Artistic inspiration, inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric p ...

s who personified memory, and a series of works about

The Tempest ''The Tempest'' is a Shakespeare's plays, play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that he wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, th ...

. Pitxot's association with

began before his birth, because their families were acquainted. But Dalí became an early supporter of Antonio Pitxot's work, and eventually asked him to co-design the Dalí Theatre and Museum ('' Teatre-Museu Dalí'') in

, Spain. There is also a permanent exhibition of Pitxot's work on one floor of that museum. Pitxot and Dalí were nearly inseparable in the last years of Dalí's life: designing Dalí's museum, teaching art and exchanging ideas about their work. Pitxot was a protector of Dalí's legacy after his death: He was a member of the board of the Gala Salvador Dalí Foundation, and he has led, and sat on the board, of several other Dalí foundations. He became the museum's director after Dalí's death. Pitxot was a respected international Catalan artist in his own right. In the year 2000, he was appointed corresponding academician for Cadaqués of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Saint George. In the 2004, he received the Gold Medal of Merit in Fine Arts from the King of Spain as a recognition for his work. In 2014 the City hall of Figueres (Girona) grants him the "Fulla de Figuera de Plata" and in 2015 was nominated "The Favorite Son of the Cadaqués city" (Girona) . Works are held in private collections and in various museums. His brothers grandson is the Spanish actor, singer and comedian Bruno Oro Pichot. He died on June 12, 2015, at the age of 81.Antoni Pitxot
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pitxot, Antoni 1934 births 2015 deaths Spanish artists Painters from Catalonia 20th-century Catalan people