"It is quite evident that the earth and nature have been decisive in the construction of my personal and pictorial universe. And this relationship is inextricably linked to the experience of the Civil War. I was then nine years old and, at that age, events like this one are especially traumatic and their memory is imprinted, forever, as a kind of invisible and deep tattoo. It is evident that this memory will always remain in the foreground, but it is not the only way at all », says Josep Guinovart in the text that opens the book of the Foundation Fund. The connection with the land and nature and the life experience of the childhood lived in Agramunt have been fixed, like a secret tattoo, in the work of Josep Guinovart. From the first steps, in the series El blat ('The wheat', 1948), until the last works, the memory of the earth, the presence of the earth, life on earth and the passage of time persists. Thus, the sunlight, like the wheel of the car inscribed in the solar circle, of La roda ('La rueda', 1949), are symbols of the vital energy and work of man, which has in the era the emblematic space of life in the countryside, the life cycle and agriculture. Agramunt, in this way, is for Guinovart, like Mont-roig for Miró, the original place, the space where the own universe is born. Thus, the era is also one of the central spaces of Guinovart's work, as it will be of the Fundació itself. In the cor de l'era ('The heart of the era', 2003) are the pieces of eggshell of life, but there is also L'etern moviment of the mule ('The eternal movement of the mule' , 2003). The fact of preserving the earth and life on earth, facing death and violence, with a spirit of struggle, resistance and combat, is one of the most persistent ideas of the aesthetics and ethics of the work lyrical and tragic of Guinovart. The plat ('The dish', 1964), The rasclet ('The rake', 1974) and L'ull del blat ('The eye of wheat', 1992) are part of a unique and complex universe, at the same time everyday and enigmatic, which is unique but also ours, belongs to everyone.

Manuel Guerrero