Painter, engraver, draughtsman, ceramicist, illustrator and sculptor, from Barcelona Santi Moix He has lived in New York since 1986, although before that he was a world citizen for France, Italy, Morocco, China, Japan… ‘The Mosquito Coast’, an anthology of his work from 1998 to 2022 at the Espai Volart of the Vila Foundation Casas, pays homage to the novel by Paul Theroux which was a movie with Harrison Ford. Also the mosquito that the painter admires “for its ability to touch your nose.”
Going through twenty-five years of artistic work seemed to Moix “an uncomfortable archeology of himself.” And he delegated the task to Enrique Juncosa: «I needed a commissioner who knows how to capture my weaknesses. Let him have fun with a look from the outside that helps you learn ».
If I had to trace an evolution from his first New York works to the frescoes in the Romanesque church of Sant Víctor de Seurí, passing through the murals of the Brooklyn Museum, Moroccan watercolors, the Prada store in Soho, or the illustrations by Rabelais (Cliff) and Twain (Galaxia Gutenberg), Moix is clear about it: «Over the years, I am no longer ashamed of knowing how to draw. Art in Catalonia is governed by conceptual painting: drawing is considered archaic. That is why my first work is oil painting to hide reality with abstraction».
american freedom
We spoke in his studio, which used to be a large antique furniture store in the Gracia neighborhood. a watercolor of Gargantua serves as an icon for conversation: “In America I have been free. The Anglo-Saxon gallery owner has no prejudices about the medium you use to express yourself. He is interested in you being unique in what you do, regardless of the means used. Here, unfortunately, it is not so; MACBA focuses on a single artistic discipline: it ignores those of us who make representational art and use traditional materials with a contemporary vision».
The portrait of the adolescent artist knew tragic moments. Moix was born in 1960 but lost his parents in 1962, engulfed by the floods that devastated the Catalan region of Vallés. Despite that traumatic experience, he remembers being a very happy child: «I was very lucky with the parents who adopted me along with my two brothers. If I dedicate myself to painting it is because at home they supported me since I was a child ».
«In the United States I have been free. The Anglo-Saxon gallery has no prejudices about the medium you use to express yourself»
The first apprenticeship was in a cultural center in the Marches in Italy. His father enrolled him there when he was 13 years old. In that country place, “where you learned to paint without being the typical academy”, things always happened: “Suddenly Fellini and Mastroianni about to shoot ‘The city of women’». In 1986, curiosity about North American painting led her to travel to New York with the few savings from a painting she had sold: «At first she painted what she could on cardboard, but it went well for me right away. I carried the black and white photos of my works in my pocket, like a sampler. When a potential client saw them and I told them they were from the last few months, he put me in contact with the gallery owner Paul Kasmin ».
His life in Brooklyn complies with the Dalí motto that routine is an artist’s paradise: «I get up early I go by bike and at seven I lock myself in the studio with my sandwich and my apple. Twelve hours later I try to continue with something else without getting bored. Over the years I have gotten rid of that Catalan conscience of guilt ».
Moix, in his studio, absorbed in a painting
Among his New York anecdotes, one of those that leave their mark. It was in 2007 in a horrible park in Soho where he took her daughter on Sunday morning. «The little girl had made friends with another mulatto girl who was accompanied by her father with sunglasses: it was David Bowie! We spent three Sundays talking about art and common friendships. She told me that he had been in Barcelona and he had liked it a lot. Until, on the third Sunday, someone broke in with a telephoto lens. The following Sunday, Bowie did not return.
Moix’s painting tends, more and more explicitly, towards an expressionist representation that Juncosa describes as «mythopoetic». The curator underlines the originality of the pieces made with the master ceramicist Joan Raventós and the artist’s imagery: flowers, insects, birds, but also scenes comic book debtors and cartoons.
Like other creators who succeed abroad, it is inevitable to ask Moix if he feels recognized in his land: «I’m not worried. Here he works in little chapels that do not go with me ».