2023-07-08 11:57:47
THE GUIDED HAND: JOSEFA TOLRÀ – MADGE GILL. VISIONARY WOMEN
Joana Baygual
“Only when I draw do I feel at peace”
Josefa Tolrà
The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, MNAC, presents, until November 5, 2023, the magnificent exhibition “The Guided Hand: Josefa Tolrà (1880-1959) – Madge Gill (1882-1961). Visionary Women”. Two unknown women in the History of Art (in capital letters), but thanks to the MNAC, and the tenacity of curators and art historians, have entered one of the main museums in Europe through the front door. Pilar Bonet, promoter of the Visionary Women Art research group and principal investigator of the works of Josefa Tolrà, is the curator of this exhibition. Many years of rigorous study, curiosity and political analysis have led this curator to appreciate the figure of Josefa Tolrà. On the other hand, the British Vivienne Roberts is the historian who has investigated the most about the life, work and creative personality of Madge Gill.
These two visionary women are very similar, due to their creations and their life trajectory. Both working class and Capricorn astral sign, without artistic training or higher education, but with similar traumatic experiences and personal duels (both lost two children), they engendered some mysterious works that leave us perplexed and intrigued. From different places, Josefa de Cabrils (Barcelona) and Madge from the East End (London), but very parallel contexts, produced works that seem to have been inspired by similar drives*.
Their works are usually drawings, some in notebooks in the case of Josefa or other supports such as postcards in Madge, but both also make wonderful embroideries. These techniques, considered minor within the History of Art, are those used by both creators. With no relationship with artistic styles or fashions, both created their own technique and language, without intending to, since for them neither the market nor stylistic perfection were important, they were only a means. Visionary women who captured what they saw in their inner visions, inexplicable perceptions for us, but for them the way to visualize and somehow materialize those sensations and extrasensory perceptions. We know that they perceived the aura, that halo invisible to many people but that sensitive women identify and from this they can discover the state of mind of a suffering being, it is said that according to the color that that aura acquires.
These two women were closely linked to esoteric knowledge and the creative act guided by the automatism of psychic lrance, which is why the title of the exhibition is “The Guided Hand”.
Who guided those women in their creations? Both were close to the new secular spiritualities that spread in Europe from the end of the 19th century. Especially spiritualism and theosophy, philosophies that brought together principles of Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. Both had experience in esoteric knowledge and practices: astrology, prophecies, pendulum, imposition of hands, etc. Their practices had healing as their main function. We could say that they were “good witches”, mediums or a kind of healers who healed the wounds of the soul. They never charged for their works, at best they gave them away and they didn’t sign them either, renouncing the notion of authorship. They work at night, without models or breaks, with the means at their disposal: simple paper, colored pencils, ink and pen.
To the left Madge Gill and to the right Josefa Tolrà, in the room where drawings on postcards and diaries are gathered.
The exhibition begins in a room presided over by two portraits of the artists, working, sewing in their domestic spaces, that is, in their workshops.
In this first room we find a series of postcards drawn by Madge Gill and the notebooks that Josefa Tolrà used to write moral reflections, poetry or even novels with illustrations. Showcases full of very intimate documents of these two artists. We can see many similarities in their spellings and symbols. Both repeat the figure of the spiral that is the symbol of energy, time, growth, the cosmos, space, the labyrinth, etc.
Leaving this room we access another room where the “beings of light” appear to us, great figures of angelic or spiritual beings. We walk between the different rooms through some veils that simulate semi-transparent walls of a uterine home, of a placenta, a metaphor for these highly interior and feminine creations by the artists. Creations “delivered” from pain by themselves.
The works and the authorship dialogue with each other. There are some labels that indicate to whom each work corresponds, and little else. They did not usually date or title their works. These informations are not necessary. Surely at the end of the visit the public will be able to distinguish the works of these two authors without having to look at the cartouches. They look identical, but they are not.
In the center drawing by Josefa Tolrà surrounded by works by Madge Gill.
We also highlight the textile works, the embroideries that were carried out automatically in the case of Madge Gill, wonderful textures and reliefs that resemble landscapes, cartographies, from a bird’s eye view; and the delicate, perfect and magnificent embroideries made by Josefa Tolrà on shawls, full of feminine and nature symbols: uteruses and cells, sidereal blooms.
Detail of Josefa Tolrà’s black silk shawl
Josefa said that only when she drew did she feel at peace, Madge that her works freed her from worries. In other words, a creativity that lends them the inner time to appease the wounds of the soul and a way of transferring that healing power to those who need it. Donna Haraway tells us from feminism that we must make a planet or a world more habitable, learn to inhabit it and create other worlds. These women did it, they were visionaries who sought the good of humanity through their works, helped and helped themselves.
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* In psychoanalysis, the drive is the deep psychic energy that directs the action towards an end, discharging itself to achieve it.
The guiding hand: Josefa Tolrà (1880-1959) – Madge Gill (1882-1961). Visionary Women, MNAC, Barcelona. From July 7 to November 5, 2023.
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