ARTEBISE, THE LOST SKETCHBOOK
—————————————————————————–Zebra Crossing——————————-
In 1995, in anticipation of a potential exhibition in Paris, I prepared a monographic sketchbook, the only one
until then, featuring drawings of the French avant-garde from the early last century,
which I named “Artebise”. A hybrid word, a blend of ‘Art’ and ‘Heurtebise’, the
name of the angel who accompanied Jean Cocteau from the day he met Picasso. In
the sketchbook featured multiple scenes with images of Edith Piaf, Nijinsky, Jean Cocteau
and other artists of the era, as well as some works on “Parade”, a text by Cocteau
adapted for the stage, with a libretto by Apollinaire, sets by Picasso, and music by Erik Satie.
The fact is that the sketchbook, in the hands of the wrong person, never reached the gallery in
Paris, nor was it returned to me. The excuses concerning this and other works dragged on indefinitely, and
even today they are in court. After a few years, the sketchbook appeared disbound at a
auction house in Barcelona, not the entire sketchbook, of course, just three or four pages. A collector
who bought a couple of them contacted me via the website, because it seemed strange to him
that behind the drawing he had bought, there was another of the same quality that was not
signed. I enlarged the image on the computer because I had doubts about the signature, for
as not all pages in a sketchbook are typically signed, and well, the signature that appeared on the drawing,
was stamped with a stamp, made from one of my signatures.
Never again the nightmare, fragmented by the ravenous hand of greed, which turned what was a
complete narrative into a fragmented discourse, with the ambition of profiting from it. Less than a month ago,
the thought crossed my mind to include the forty-two sketchbooks I have stored
at home, dating from 1989 to 2013, in the donation of my archive and the Art archive to the
city’s institutions, because I was haunted by the idea that one day, the four thousand drawings
that comprise them would end up on the market for sale, should they be fragmented
these sketchbooks.
A phone call from my friend Sebastià Machado, from Reus, alerted me that on a
website, a handful of my drawings were for sale, all of the same size. I
checked, and indeed, there were twelve of the twenty pages from the lost sketchbook. The website belongs to a
respectable gallerist, Joaquim Casadevall, from Montblanc. I called him and immediately
we reached an exchange agreement; exchanges have always been part of transactions in the
art world and are often very fruitful. Furthermore, he told me he had sold one to a former gallerist
from Tarragona, a very pleasant person whom I have known for some time, Àngel Anyor, with whom I did not
find it difficult to reach an agreement. Thanks to chance and to friends, now to the partially
recovered sketchbook will be added some preliminary studies I have preserved and photographs of what the
complete sketchbook was, and with this text and some new drawings, it will become an artist’s book,
which will be added to the donation I have already made to the Municipal Library-Hemeroteca and the Museum
of City History, and the cession of my private collection to the Museum of Modern Art of the
Provincial Council.
——————————————————-Josep Maria Rosselló—————————————-
