“LA ESTRELLA DE SITGES”, PAINTED WHITE
From Blanca Subur, while I was in Tarragona during siesta time, Pep called me on my mobile phone.
Dalmau, known to friends as Pepe de la Estrella. He tells me, distressed, that the new tenants of the premises on
Major Street, where he and his family owned the historic pastry shop “La Estrella de Sitges”,
have painted the entire premises white, including the mural paintings I created there.
“La Estrella” was remodeled and restored in the early 90s, a renovation
in which I participated, painting the majestic arch that spanned the entire premises.
Years later, it underwent a second renovation, when the ceiling collapsed while
works were being carried out on the upper floors, and an unfortunate downpour precipitated the tragedy. Once again,
I participated in this second renovation, respecting some parts of the previous
painting and creating new motifs in the most deteriorated areas. Pepe tells me that the town
is agitated and hurt, just now, less than a week after it was made public
my donation of approximately forty works to the Sitges City Council, to the people of
Sitges.
At seven in the evening, as always, I open my computer and find two messages from Isidre
Roset, one with a quite explicit photograph of the aforementioned premises, in immaculate white; only the
“putti” on the ceiling immersed in their circle, the other explaining the current tragedy and the
public outcry. Alas! Friends, if even Don Santiago Rusiñol, due to budget cuts, has been left
without “The Bouquet of All Seasons”!
The paintings I created during the second renovation were interesting for utilizing
part of the previous ones, of modernist inspiration, such as the “Sardana of the Fairies”, and focusing the inner part
of the arch on the mythical “Yellow Manifesto” of 1928, respecting the verses of J.V. Foix, one
of the signatories along with Dalí, Gasch, Montanyà, Lorca, Miró, etc. The result was a painting of
historical transition, and surrealist reminiscences. These paintings, which were never frescoes,
were indeed created, especially the second one, at the same speed as a fresco, amidst the
dust of the construction work, and a constant anxiety amidst the comings and goings of bricklayers, carpenters, plumbers, and
various tradespeople.
The latest tenants of the premises, in an unconscious impulse brought about by chance, which in this case
is a surrealist maneuver, have done nothing more than blindly follow the forceful and radical
dictates of the “Manifesto”, and driven by the impulse of this spirit of absolute purity, against
the decrepit past, worn by time, they have left the space, not without commendable effort. Clean,
aseptic and disinfected, white as a mausoleum.
I am writing this text to prevent anyone, with all the good intentions in the world, from proposing that I return to
paint the arch of “La Estrella”- We had a lot of fun, Pepe, and you don’t know it, but it was I who
ate the chocolates while painting.- But enough of that, let us follow the precepts of the
“Manifesto”, which miraculously, taking as its medium the candid soul of the wall painters,
have been revealed to us, and remain forever at “La Estrella” as a white painting. I
held, several years ago, an exhibition in white, in which, day by day, I painted
various motifs, live, in front of the public. In the end, although it was quite good, I thought that
I was more interested before starting, when all the canvases, with careful preparation and
some textures, remained white. In the case at hand, perhaps it has been the very
paintings, which, though young, had already come of age, that have demanded, from silence,
the current whiteness, before turning into sickly and historical ruins, at the opposite extreme
of the message they intended to convey. Of these and other matters, we are left with the documents
photographic, the virtual ones, and the memory or the very contemporary amnesia.
Hooray! Long live the “Yellow Manifesto” and the “Puffed Bread of Cap de la Vila” !
——————————————-Josep Maria Rosselló————————————————
