The Vila Casas Foundation dedicates an anthology to the work of Luis Claramunt

The Espais Volart of the Fundació Vila Casas presents the anthological exhibition of the work of Luis Claramunt (Barcelona, 1951-Zarautz, 2000). Luis Claramunt. Shipwrecks and storms aims to trace his dazzling thirty-year career and at the same time vindicate him as one of the most personal, intense and dramatic Catalan artists of the second half of the 20th century. Curated by Sílvia Martínez Palou and Àlex Susanna, the exhibition travels through the various cities that marked its trajectory: Barcelona (1970-1985), Seville (1985-1990), with constant getaways to Marrakech, and Madrid (1990). -2000) with the counterpoint of the summer stays in Horta de Sant Joan (Tarragona), the seven trips to Marrakech and the fascination with the estuary of Bilbao. The exhibition can be visited from January 21 to May 1, 2022.

The son of a wealthy family from Barcelona's Eixample, Luis Claramunt left his family home when he was 18 to immerse himself in the most mischievous Barcelona and adopt the gypsy culture. In the early years, his pictorial work picked up a range of very obvious influences - from Picasso to Munch to Goya, Van Gogh, Gutiérrez Solana and Nonell - but little by little he created his own expressionist imaginary using an increasingly gestural or calligraphic language. A tireless flâneur, he also drew his sources of inspiration from street life and his leading authors, such as Stevenson, Conrad and Monfreid, all narrators of dramatic first-person adventures at sea, which the artist recreate in a very personal way.

Aquesta exposició antològica de la seva obra vol fer els trenta anys d'una trajectòria fulgurant i reivindicar-la com una de les més personals, intenses i dramàtiques de l'art català i espanyol de la segona meitat del segle XX. Without it, however, his work is not at all easy to classify, due to its incorruptible and irreducible nature. Seen in perspective, we can say that it belongs to the great family of expressionists of all time: those who were not by affiliation to any school, but in a fatal and inevitable way. Claramunt always prioritized the subjective expression of reality over the objective impression, and for this reason he modulated its meaning as his path developed, as if at each stage reality itself demanded a express it differently.

The truth is that Claramunt needed to distort reality in order to capture a whole network of tensions and dynamisms both external and internal, yet, unlike the German expressionists of the early twentieth century, there was no attitude of insurgency, only aspiration. of creating a visual space endowed with life of its own, which he achieved to the fullest.