Arranz-Bravo, the "atomic" artist

Mid-morning call from Albert Mercadé, friend and director of the Arranz-Bravo Foundation. In fact, I introduced them a long time ago because I sensed that interesting things could emerge from this pairing. Albert, currently president of the Association of Art Critics of Catalonia, tells me with a lot of left-handedness that Eduard died, in his bed, in an organized manner, just as he was. silence Emotions on the skin. intense memories This Tuesday I had lunch - it had been a while - at his home in Vallvidrera, a magical space, built by his gallerist, also the Italo-Swiss architect Lanfranco Bombelli. Next to the house, a decade later an impressive studio was built, created by Jordi Garcés, the architect and father of the philosopher Marina Garcès, where he spent hours and hours painting, sculpting, drawing and contemplating the work, while thinking of future ideas. As always, we had a chat in the dining room and then went to the study. From this meeting we agreed on an exhibition of ceramics at the Terracotta Museu de la Bisbal with a very interesting series that he did, as well as a reunion with the Miguel Marcos gallery in Barcelona, which had already exhibited it. I still remember how we met at an exhibition at the fantastic Empordà gallery Cyprus Art at the end of the 90s of the last century. We became very good friends and I helped reintroduce his legacy in Catalonia - he was doing very well in the US, but here his legacy had taken a back seat after having been very successful together with Rafa Bartolozzi and the memorable action in the Tipel factory.

I organized exhibitions of him at the Fontana d'Or of Caixa Girona with the help of Arcadi Calzada and the Girona City Council -Capella de Sant Nicolau-, Caixa Manresa thanks to Jaume Torras, in Sant Cugat del Vallès with the complicity of Jordi Batlle and the City Council, in the Miramar Building in Sitges and Andorra with the help of Gabi Serrano, and in Hospitalet, in the Tecla Sala, where we negotiated with Celestino Corbacho his future foundation We also added a bronze sculpture and a painting to the Lluís Coromina Foundation, even though it already had an important pictorial work from the first period. Arranz-Bravo's work is also well represented in the Bassat collection. I still remember when he took me into the studio and asked me about the works. Once I told him that a painting didn't seem quite right to me and when I came back weeks later he had already covered it up. I was a little self-conscious about what I had done - despite the fact that it is (should be) common in creative work - and he told me that layers generate intensity and even though you can't see what's underneath, the vibration it is perceived It was a lesson in risk, authenticity and the metaphysics of painting.

Arranz- Bravo, el galerista Miguel Marcos i Bartolozzi a Saragossa, el 1977.

Last Tuesday we were joined by Miquel Gelabert, a very successful artist, who gives him logistical support a couple of times during the week and who has been a key person in the history of Eduard, who has always had assistants who start and to whom he helps such as Martí Cormand, Bernat Daviu and who demonstrated the spirit of intergenerational cooperation that he always wanted to provoke. Talking to Montse Aguer today, she reminded me of a lunch in her studio in Vallvidrera that also, when I introduced them, and she told me that she had an intelligent and playful irony that made her laugh a lot. He was an atomic man, he didn't leave anyone indifferent. He had a very special relationship with Cadaqués gallerist Lanfranco Bombelli. In fact, thanks to the Cadaqués gallery he contacted German gallerists and, subsequently, American gallerists -Franklin Bowles- who consolidated his professional career internationally. He was a renaissance man who painted, drew, made a lot of engravings, made sculpture - "L'acollidora" in l'Hospitalet, where his foundation's headquarters are located - ceramics, muralism, book illustration - great reader- or he had dared to paint an ocean liner. Total artist, expanded artist as Joan Brossa would say. He spoke five languages, he was a tireless worker, serious and scrupulous to the max, he was the youngest of a family of eight brothers which gave him a mental and human agility and a desire to fight which he always had on. He entrusted us with energy at all times and to everyone. It is a very important loss for the Catalan and Spanish artigraphy of Contemporary Art and, personally, he leaves us an atomic man whom I loved as if he were one of the family.

D'esquerra a dreta, Ricard Planas, Eduard Arranz-Bravo, Núria Poch, Anna Maria Camps i Albert Mercadé. Any 2017. Fundació Arranz-Bravo.

El novembre del 2022 va participar a la presentació del monogràfic de bonart dedicat a Duchamp, Arranz-Bravo el primer per la dreta, al costat de Rosa Maria Malet, Joan Casellas i Carolina Rossich, conductora de l'acte.

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