Installations
From the 8th of September to the 24th of November, Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana presented a comprehensive programme featuring installations, archives and performances by the participants of the edition.
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Garden of ‘La Ricarda’
- TypeInstallation
- ParticipantMoisès Villèlia
- VenueCasa Gomis
Garden of ‘La Ricarda’, 1965 © Moisès Villèlia. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana / Ivan Erofeev
Moisès Villèlia was a Catalan self-taught artist who came from the craft world. From an early age, he assisted in his father’s furniture workshop in Barcelona, where he learned the skills of an artisanal woodworker. In his early 20s, he dedicated himself to sculpture, inspired by the Constructivist movement and the Modernist aesthetics of the likes of Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore. He was a member of Art Actual, a group of Catalan artists that defended transgression and promoted avant-garde principles, as well as the Cobalt 49 Club. The latter was commonly known as Club 49 and considered the main supporter of the Catalan avant-garde between the 1960s and 1980s. Villèlia was interested in organic forms as well as so-called “poor” and fragile materials, which were not traditionally used in sculpture. In his abstract compositions, the (inner) void is a central sculptural element, which he explored with and through bamboo and later with fibre cement tubes. Ricardo Gomis Serdañons and his wife Inés Bertrand Mata commissioned Villèlia to design their garden as a circular, sculptural space – at once functional and playful. Some of his sculptures can still be found in the garden, which he never completed, existing not only as artworks, but also functioning to enclose the garden.
Visitors can stroll the garden, look for his sculptures and, inside Casa Gomis, view archival material pertaining to Moisès’ proposal.
Garden of ‘La Ricarda’, 1965 © Moisès Villèlia. Photo © Manifesta 15 Barcelona Metropolitana / Ivan Erofeev
1965
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