CHRIST OF THE RESURRECTION (GYPSY CHRIST). Rome, Quirino Theatre
In 1984, in Madrid, through the producers of “ARA-Espacio de Creación,” Salvador Távora, director of the theatre group “La Cuadra de Sevilla,” proposed that I create a live painting measuring 7 x 2.50 metres, during the performance of the work that was to be presented at the Festivalle della Pasqua di Roma, directed by Maurizio Scaparro. The work was titled “Popular Flamenco Easter,” based on an idea by José Monleón. It was performed by: Enrique Morente, Manolo Sanlucar, Vicente Amigo, Ballet Español de Madrid, La Cuadra de Sevilla, and Josep Maria Rosselló. We participated in the festival representing the Spanish state, through the Ministry of Culture. And Paloma Gomez Borrero served as the press chief for the Spanish representation.
Four performances were held at the Quirino Theatre, and I painted four canvases. It was a resounding success. It seems, from comments made to me afterwards, that some Roman museums were interested in keeping one of the canvases in Rome, but the producers refused.
The canvases arrived at my studio in Madrid, on General Arrando Street, rolled one on top of the other. When I separated them, two were stuck together because they had been placed one on top of the other while the previous one was still partially wet. Force was needed to separate them, and one of the canvases tore. It should be noted that to keep the project from becoming too expensive and due to the extraordinary dimensions of the works, bed linen (cotton) was used. I provisionally patched the canvas in question, intending to restore it later. However, one day everything ended up in a warehouse with other works of mine, a warehouse registered under the producers’ names, and the canvases disappeared without having been photographed.
Of all this, only one testimony remained: the filming carried out by RAI and later acquired by TVE, and the press coverage I managed to recover almost clandestinely three years later.
In 2005, a phone call from one of the project’s former producers alerted me that they had located the warehouse where the canvases were stored. They were moved to my studio in Tarragona where they were restored and prepared. Due to their dimensions, more than 20 metres of distance were needed to photograph them, and the only place with suitable conditions was Shed 1 at the Moll de Costa in Tarragona. It was granted to me for ten days, which made the exhibition and photography of the canvases public and involved them in a new project, “Cadavre&Grafitti,” which, inspired by the game of “cadavre exquis,” built a bridge towards graffiti.
The canvases were photographed one by one by Pep Escoda, as was the entire project and the artists who were part of it. In 2006, the Museum of Modern Art of the Tarragona Provincial Council (MAMT) held an exhibition of the photographs titled “The Memory of the Ephemeral.” The canvases, rolled up, remained stored in my studio until 2013, when I had to close it for financial reasons. The first of the canvases painted in Rome has been donated to MAMT. The others are stored at the Port, and will be part of a new project in which they can be seen exhibited all together for the first and only time in a year and a half (2015). The exhibition will be titled “Theory of Destruction.” The canvases, with the exception of the first, will be destroyed in a slow process and in public view, because they were never painted to be preserved.
——————————————-Josep Maria Rosselló—————————————————–
