Marcelo Segall was born on July 14th, 1970 in Santiago (Chile) as Marcelo Miguel Pedro Segall Iturriaga. In 1974 his family moved to the Netherlands. From Groningen, where he lived for the first two years, his family settled in Bijlmermeer, near Amsterdam. Segall started his artistic training in 1992 at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten in Utrecht (HKU). In 1995 he participated in an exchange project with the Universidad de Barcelona (Spain), facultad de Bellas Artes.

After his graduation Segall received recognition with his solo show ‘Babyboom’ (1998) in the Berlage Stock Exchange Building (Beurs van Berlage) in Amsterdam, with a portrait of a blue, bold Queen Beatrix, titled ‘Bella’. (It was considered very provocative, since the former Dutch Queen Beatrix is renowned for her royal ‘big’ hairdo.) This much talked about painting reached many headlines in Dutch news papers and magazines.

In his series ‘Babyboom’ Segall connects two worlds by bridging the contrast between the harsh reality of adults and the innocent world of a child. By combining elements and slight changes of clearly recognizable figures and objects he creates a completely new language. Celebrities, graphical signs, a hyper-realistic style and bold, contrasting colors are typical for paintings from this series. This meta-analysis, which transcends persons and objects, seeks a unique form of experiencing beauty by bridging contradictions. Segall kept working this series until the birth of his first child in 2003.

Shortly after becoming father Segall reverts to childish objects which he used in ‘Babyboom’, forming the basis of the series ‘Babyroom’ (2003). From that moment on, family life plays a major role in Segall’s work. From his role as a father he finds inspiration in observed tendencies in western culture, treating the relation between consumption-oriented infrastructure in modern western society and the human behavior brought forth by this society.

Especially the way in which private life becomes public and – vice versa – modern media turn intimacy into widespread public entertainment and an obscene mirror of today’s consumption excess, is a central motive in Segall’s work. Characteristic for this point of view is his life-size, storied wedding cake of resin, made for the exhibition ‘Porn Your Life’ (2008), in which he used excrement of himself and his family. It generated a huge amount of publicity, not only in printed mediums but also on Dutch national television. By showing the excess of the excess Segall forces us to create new connections to products brought forth by ourselves and the way in which we are a product of these products.