2023-09-21 20:05:23
A DISCREET PAINTER: MARIA GIRONA
Mª Ángeles Cabré
Right now there is an exhibition in Barcelona that does justice to a painter who always kept a low profile and who undoubtedly deserved a retrospective like this one that can be seen in one of the Barcelona headquarters of the Vila Casas Foundation. When I think of Maria Girona (Barcelona, 1923-2015), who left us when she was already in her nineties after a life dedicated to painting -her own and that of her husband, Albert Ràfols Casamada-, the couple formed by María Teresa León and Rafael Alberti. Specifically, I see the latter returning from their long exile and at the airport, after descending the stairs of the plane, I hear the poet say to the members of the press who were waiting for them: “María Teresa is also coming with me.”
Saving the distance – because Alberti liked to appear much more than Ràfols Casamada, who was a measured man -, until recently we have had the same feeling with most artist couples: that they made sure that they could fulfill without impediments with their vocations paying the price of partially renouncing theirs. They neither stopped writing nor stopped painting, but they substantially lowered their expectations and took care to remain in the background. There are exceptions, of course. But if when we talk to artists who have developed their careers during the second half of the 20th century without the ties of half-sex, they already tell us terrifying stories of machismo, it seems logical to think that those who lived with brilliant men also suffered similar situations in their flesh.
We see Maria Girona from the beginning surrounded by male artists. She emerged in the 40s, participating in the Pictòria room in a group exhibition by the Els Vuit group, where she was the only woman. To say that as an artistic group, although it dissolved soon, Els Vuit preceded Dau al Set. It is true that at the beginning of the 50s she went to Paris with one of those scholarships from the French Institute that also took Antoni Tàpies and Modest Cuixart there, among others. It was immediately afterwards when she married the painter Ràfols Casamada, with whom in the 60s she would be one of the founders of the Elisava school of graphic design and later of the EINA School of Design and Art, inspired by the modern Bauhaus.
Although in 1977 she received the City of Barcelona Plastic Arts Prize, exhibited individually in prestigious galleries (Parés, René Metras, Joan Prats…) and in 1988 she received the Creu de Sant Jordi, she always seemed to be in the shadow of her husband. Her work is restrained, prudent, like Mompou’s music that she liked so much. It seems that she paints in lower case: everyday, intimate, harmonious scenes. We could affirm without fear of being wrong that his is a “quiet” painting. Ràfols Casamada always made larger, more eye-catching works, and it would be said that they had greater artistic ambition. Let it be noted that contrasting them helps me to situate her works, not to undervalue Girona’s.
This Catalan Berthe Morisot – who occupied a place similar to that of her in Impressionism – was the niece of the figurative painter Rafael Benet and as a child she was taught to draw by the poet Palmira Jaquetti, who by the way was married to a Belgian painter. In her work we find many still lifes, flowers, urban corners that become more abstract over the years. She likes the practice of humble collage and introduces elements more typical of crafts, such as borders. And she paints the landscapes that she loves, like the beautiful Cadaqués or Calaceite by José Donoso.
As JF Yvars says in the catalogue, in it “the continuous line never limits a chromatic field nor does it suggest a constructive project. The lines are affirmed in his pictorial work as definitive vectors of the plastic gesture and gain volume over a space of color that stars in the light gradation. It would be worth talking about his points of contact with the work of Ràfols Casamada one day. In her apparent simplicity, Maria Girona made poetry with everyday objects (a glass, a fruit, a book) and drifted towards the wisdom of synthesis. In her expressive simplicity, she went from being a disciple of the first Cezanne or Joaquim Sunyer to being a disciple of herself.
Maria Girona, contemporary of herself, Vila Casas Foundation (Espai Volart), Barcelona. Until January 14, 2024.
Curator: Victoria Combalía and Àlex Susanna.
#DISCREET #PAINTER #MARIA #GIRONA