Artist Josep Maria Rosselló Has Donated a Significant Portion of His Work to Museums and Institutions in Tarragona, His Native City, and Sitges, where He Resided and Worked between 1963 and 1980. This Donation Was Prompted by the Bankruptcy of the Rosselló Foundation, which Was Intended to Permanently Exhibit His Work.
Once the establishment of the Rosselló Foundation, which was intended to gather and exhibit all the work of Josep Maria Rosselló (Tarragona, 1950) in a single building, was given up for lost, the artist decided to transfer a significant portion of his creations to museums in Tarragona and Sitges, the two cities linked to his life and work. The former is his native city and where he currently lives, and the latter is where he resided between 1963 and 1980 and where he gained momentum as an artist (in 1992, for example, he created the poster for the centenary of the Modernist Festivals, and also carried out various live painting and mural actions there, in front of the public).
The Sitges Museums Consortium will now receive a portion of his works. And above all, it will be at the Museum of Modern Art of Tarragona (MAMT) where the majority of the paintings, drawings, and sculptures that the author had kept until now – more than 150 – created from 1963 to the present, will be preserved. The MNAT is now classifying the works, which Rosselló himself has cleaned and, if necessary, restored. He has also donated more than half of his library to the Municipal Archive of Tarragona.
The large-format pieces (especially the sculptures) have been distributed among the Rovira i Virgili University (where he has ceded the painting A la frontera del dia, measuring 1.80×1.80 meters, with the frame also painted by Rosselló); the Royal Archaeological Society of Tarragona, and the Port Authority. In this latter space, the sculpture Venus de Saint-Phalle, which he created together with Rafael Bartolozzi and which is scheduled to be exhibited at the Tarragona Fishermen’s Guild in 2014, will be preserved.
The collections he is now transferring are those works he has chosen to retain: “These are the ones I have chosen over the years; unique pieces, each of which marked a step in my career, whether in painting, drawing, or sculpture.” “These are the most cherished pieces,” adds the artist, noting that the economic value of the transferred collections is approximately 300,000 euros.
Josep Maria Rosselló has been compelled to transfer works to these institutions – which is for a period of five years – due to the bankruptcy of the foundation bearing his name, which was intended to open an art center in the city of Tarragona where his works would be permanently exhibited. The Rosselló Foundation, driven by private initiative, had also set itself the dual mission of promoting the work of young experimental artists from the city, most of whom were linked to Espai Rosselló Tàrraco, the small exhibition space that the artist opened in his studio in 2005 with the aim of disseminating the work of other emerging creators. This space was the embryo of the Rosselló Foundation, which was born with the collaboration of the city’s institutions and business community. “In recent years, we have been looking for the appropriate space for the Rosselló Foundation, but for one reason or another, it has not materialized, and the partners said they could not invest any more money,” explains Josep Maria Rosselló.
Unique Exhibition
On the other hand, among the projects the artist is now undertaking is a major exhibition that will open in spring at Tinglado 1 of the Costa de Tarragona pier, and in which he will exhibit two large-format canvases (measuring 7.5 x 2.5 meters each), which he painted in 1984 in Madrid and Rome for the performance of Pasqua Popular Flamenca, by Salvador Távora and José Monleón, with the company La Cuadra de Sevilla. These are the first live paintings the artist created in front of the public, and which he later presented throughout Catalonia accompanied by classical and jazz orchestras. In this exhibition in Tarragona, he will also display the two monumental canvases he painted for the project L’art al carrer (Madrid, 1986). It will be the first time that all four large-format works can be seen together, but only for a short time, as the artist anticipates that the exhibition will conclude with the destruction of these pieces, by cutting them into small pieces: “An artist has the right to both create and destroy his work – in fact, the artist is the only one who has the right to destroy it. And for me, this will not be a tragic destruction, but a liberation,” according to Rosselló, who adds that this decision “falls within the canons of ephemeral art: it is the theory of destruction.”
Published in
El Punt Avui- Suplement Cultura September 20, 2013 Page 24
