A proposal
With the idea of ​​putting on the table the great dispersion of the production of Josep Guinovart for towns and cities of Catalonia, we made a proposal to museums, art centers and foundations: the request of one of the pieces of Guinovart that they formed part of your collection. The reception has been extraordinary: the vast majority of cultural institutions have participated enthusiastically.

A surprise
The moment of valuing all the ceded works was a rewarding coincidence, as the result was surprising: there was an outstanding thematic and chronological variety in the whole. Practically all the decades are represented, in the exhibition, which allows to see the evolution, the liberation and the rupture of limits that Josep Guinovart presented in his artistic production.

All a trajectory
The oldest piece is from 1946, one of the earliest of its production, and comes from Sant Pol de Mar. We contemplate a landscape of the sea, but totally away from the blue of Guinovart, taken to the highest point in the Blue Tower of Vilanova i la Geltrú. The blue knew him with only four years in Tarragona, and he exploded it from 1964 in Cal Tieso de Castelldefels. The sea also comes from the interior, from Mollet del Vallès, with Cap and Barca. The blue production takes place in Agramunt.

This Mediterranean sea contrasts with the aridity of the inner Catalonia in the summer, with the nightstand and signs. Thematic and chronological counterposition: the oldest piece shows the sea, and the closest to our days, in 2003, presents the typical agramuntina inspiration. In this case, the stubble is burned by a civil war that bombed until only smoke was left. Josep Guinovart remembered a lot of his experience as a child during the Civil War: sheltered in a cabin on the outskirts of Agramunt. At night, the owl, the animal at night, broke the silence shouting to the moon so that once again the calmness was imposed on the field.

And between the beginning and the end, all the symbolism that the artist was cultivating. The oval of Collage de balancí II is a connection with the omnipresent modernism and the first steps of collage, its favorite technique. He will seize these constructions that move away from flat painting; In the beginning, he put objects of all kinds, recovered from the street or bought in the Encants.

The Civil War is one of the great historical events that marked it; So much so that it recovers the theme throughout its production, whether it is the cruel theme itself (Door of the 36) or its children's experience to move from living to the big city to do it in the middle of the field (De night and signs).

The exhibition becomes a gift for the frequents of Espai Guinovart, as the pilgrimage to the cultural institutions of Catalonia is presented symbolically in the old market of Agramunt. His dispersed work is reunited and it is a gratitude to all those who bring contemporary art to every corner of our land. Today we recover all these corners by drawing a network and put them on the map in order to do a new re-reading that will allow us to reflect on a whole life.

Lara Vidal Santorum
Historian of art