Modern art is characteristically dramatic, emphatic and monumental. They are qualifications that go well with your most famous names. For example, Picasso, Pollock or Serra. However, we can also imagine the outcome of this canon, where we come across Paul Klee, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Calder or Morandi. Nombres equally important and undeniably “modern” to which we can still associate the best expressions such as irony, calm and silence.
Moisès Villèlia (Barcelona, 1928 – 1994) belongs directly to this second group, including, if you like, the most extreme place in terms of fragility and good humor. Add some of your own notes on how to use natural materials have this unprecedented moment in the artistic field, opening up to distant cultures or dealing with the technical means of artesanal art such as fabric.
All this you will think of an astute reader or a knowledgeable reader, who will confirm you in the earlier audacity of the rumor that art was later dominated by the Middle Ages. Since there was little to argue for the exhibition’s interest, I point to the most recent assumptions: since 1999, when he exhibited at IVAM, no institution has dedicated Villèlia to the museum. And finally and without embargo first, This exhibition is a valuable aesthetic experiencewho runs with a smile on his face.
Hijo de un carpenter, the civil war shortened his formation that was born returning to the lessons of his superior father. From an early age also passionate about poetry and influenced by oriental aesthetics, he was nevertheless praised for sculpture. A friend of the poet Rabasseda and the critic Cirici Pellicer, he celebrated his first solo exhibition in 1954 at the Museo Municipal de Mataró.
Allie They were discovered by Joan Brossawith whom I kept a close friend who introduced them to the Dau club on set and introduced them to the collector Joan Prats. Yes intercession I was making filiform sculptures, not figurativeimplementing such unconventional materials as onion logs or corcho. In 1957, he added wire, wire and buttons to his sculptures to create a dematerialized sculpture, grounded in spatial space. He thus embarked on the path of names such as Ángel Ferrant, Julio González, Alberto Sánchez or the Russian constructivism of Naum Gabo.
A view of the exhibition. Photo: Patio Herreriano Museum
In 1958, drilled sticks, some organized as mobiles, were exhibited for the first time in the Gaspar Room. The home of painter Magda Bolumarová joined the Fomento de las Artes Decoratives group in 1960, developing its first work in collaboration with architects and engineers and using new materials such as concrete and fiber cement. With it, he designed various gardens in Catalonia, such as the Garden Next and Here, in Paris, the interior garden of the René Metrás gallery. In 1967, thanks to one of the Instituto Francés, he traveled to Paris, where he began to create his beautiful compositions on taladrado paper. Between 1967 and 1972 he lived in Argentina (where he lived on his own) and then in Ecuador.
Discovering certain local varieties of giant bamboo will allow you to create large-scale sculptures. On his return, he is installed in Molló. He began using madera sauce, abundant in the area, and created works with figurative and surrealist echoes. Through Joan Prats he became acquainted with a number of artists, including Miró and Matisse, and also had experience in important foreign galleries. I hereby resolve to consider your eccentric trajectory, Villélia has always enjoyed wide recognition.
In 1983, the Fundación Joan Miró de Barcelona dedicated a retrospective exhibition to her, and in 1992, the Pabellón de Cataluña Exposición Universal de Sevilla presented an extraordinary collection of her films. In 1989 he wrote a play, Artistwhich we can consider as our artistic legacy. What Ángel Ferrant called “La promesa de Villèlia” in a beautiful text in 1958 was indeed full of creces.
The peculiarity of his sculptures is above “bad” material and lack of claimsas well as exploration a kinetic sculpture without comparison in Spanish art. On characteristic material, bambooit is of oriental resonances and without embargo I worked with Maresme sticks and explored all its possibilities in Ecuador. With these mimbres, our artist composed an original work, which, in my opinion, is probably related to the witty humor of Miró or the circus artist Bross, who were his friends.
A view of the exhibition. Photo: Patio Herreriano Museum
And in terms of materials I will say this it is related to the Catalan tradition that values the fragile and the abandonedas is the case with Leandro Cristófolo or Antoni Llena. Although this genealogy is a bit erudite, it is certainly most interesting to the person I am reading now to note that what was authentically rare in the media of the 20th century, foreshadowed such a powerful aesthetic as Arte Povera, later decades, or textile art, transformed into an art direction only in the XXI.
Patio Herreriano Museum runs on a trajectory from start to finish: above Homenaje and Blume from 1954 to the last large sculptures of the decade of 1980, which allows us to know his development. Another special feature of the museum is the opportunity to see so many works on paper, many of which are unheard of. It takes up two rooms of the museum, with an assembly that I think would be challenging, but which was easily solved. Combine objects such as insects and birds with ground sculptures, vertical trees, the result is a forest in which art in some form is natural to other media.
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