Modest Cuixart i Tàpies (Barcelona, November 2, 1925-Palamós, October 31, 2007) was a Spanish painter, one of the most representative of the Spanish postwar period, co-founder of the Dau al Set group together with Joan Brossa, Antoni Tàpies, Joan Ponç, Arnau Puig and Joan-Josep Tharrats. Together they founded one of the most important thought and art groups of the 1950s, bringing with them the second century vanguards.

In 1948 he participated in the founding of the Dau al Set group, together with Joan Brossa, Joan Ponç, Antoni Tàpies, Arnau Puig and Joan-Josep Tharrats, with the intention of shaking up the barren post-war artistic and cultural panorama, and in publishing of the magazine of the same name that reached an unexpected international echo.

In 1950 he actively participated in the colloquia of the second Santillana del Mar Art Week. In December, thanks to a scholarship granted by the French Institute to the painters of Dau al set, he moved to Paris together with his cousin Antoni Tapies In 1958 he received the Torres García Prize and in Paris he held his first solo exhibition at René Drouin. He visits Picasso. He is invited to the XXIX Venice Biennale and participates in the Carnegie Institut Biennial in Pitsburgh. He begins a very active exhibition stage at the international level.

In 1959 he won the first prize at the São Paulo Biennial (Brazil) ahead of the finalists Francis Bacon and Alberto Burri. He also obtained the gold medal for the Lausanne Abstract Painting Prize and exhibited at the Documenta in Kassel.

In 1960-61 he participated in a Spanish avant-garde exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London and at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, among many other solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, America and Japan.

In 1968 he was selected and participated in the historic exhibition The Art of Organic Forms at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, a pioneer in linking art and science, and the following year he participated in the International Art Salon in Basel.

In the 1980s he participated in a group exhibition at the Unesco Palace in Paris, received the Cross of Saint George from the Generalitat of Catalonia, and the Cross of Isabel La Católica. In 1988 he held an anthological exhibition in Japan, in the cities of Kobe and Tokyo.

On October 31, 2007 he died in Palamós,  two days before his 82nd birthday.