August Puig were born in 1929 in Barcelona, Spain.

August Puig exhibited his work for the first time in 1946 — before his success in winning the prize at the Exposición Internacional Unión Arte de Bilbao — in an exhibition in Els Blaus de Sarriá, along with the work of Juan Tort, Ponç, Boadella and the text from J.V. Foix. It was the first postwar exhibition of avant garde art. The exhibition provided an historic moment in Spanish art: the first totally abstract paintings ever produced by a Spanish artist. They were the work of seventeen-year-old August Puig.

Over fifty years later, and only after his death, Puig had finally begun to receive the recognition he should have earned as Spain’s pioneer abstract painter.

Shortly after the 1946 exhibition, the Institute Français announced its intention to award an art scholarship to a young Spanish artist to study in Paris, August Puig was named the winner. Although probably not intended at the time, this was the beginning of Puig’s exile. He moved to Paris, where he studied and worked for the next several years.