﻿{"id":2451,"date":"2013-08-30T14:19:22","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/carpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diem\/"},"modified":"2013-08-30T14:19:22","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T14:19:22","slug":"carpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/carpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diemcarpe-diem\/","title":{"rendered":"<!--:ca-->CARPE DIEM<!--:--><!--:es-->CARPE DIEM<!--:--><!--:en-->CARPE DIEM<!--:--><!--:ru-->CARPE DIEM<!--:-->"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--:ca--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-964\" alt=\"viewer\" src=\"http:\/\/espairossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png 300w, https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1.png 438w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cCARPE DIEM\u201d, To Miquel Serrano<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the early seventies, in that Sitges which is now a memory, I met the painter<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miquel Serrano. Always, and in any circumstance, polite, charming, elegant, ironic <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and a smoker, a heavy smoker, a \u201cbon vivant\u201d and a drinker, preferably \u201cwhisky\u201d. A regular at the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">terrace of Caf\u00e9 Roy in Sitges, Caf\u00e9 de la \u00d2pera in Barcelona, and Caf\u00e9 de Flore in Paris.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Companion of the Blai brothers, and of Manolo Muntanyola. He did not particularly like talking about art, and <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">even less about his own. He had been a student of Francesc Labarta. In the 1930s, he had painted a portrait from  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">life of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, for the presentation of one of his lectures in<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Barcelona, the Grenadian historian Antonina Rodrigo mentions it in one of her books dedicated<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">to the poet. Serrano rarely spoke of what he had done; he was a friend of Jean Cocteau, and in his apartment <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">on Rambla Catalunya, he had some beautiful drawings of fauns that Cocteau had given him, and he also<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">provided him with contacts in Paris, who commissioned originals for fabric printing,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">which allowed him to live with dignity. An unrepeatable generation. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I was very pleased to learn that a significant exhibition is finally being dedicated to him in Sitges, at<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Espai Miramar. An exhibition curated by Beli Artigas, which brings together the best of his <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">work, almost a retrospective. He probably would have been rather afraid of it, but deep down, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he would have liked it. Yes, he would have liked it very much, because, despite everything, he was tender enough to <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">accept it as a generous display of friendship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I saw some of his works from the 1940s or perhaps 1950s, at the home of Pepa<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gum\u00e0, in Sitges, who had unique works in her collection, which now belongs to her<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">daughters, Silvia and Marta Camps. Many \u201cSerranos\u201d were seen in Sitges, but not like those. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When I organized my exhibition \u201cNeomitologia de Sitges i la Blanca Subur\u201d at the Hotel<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Rom\u00e0ntic, I painted the two large-format works at \u201cCa la Femenina\u201d and the rest at the studio<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">that Serrano had in the apartment above Caf\u00e9 Roy, and which the master kindly lent me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The circumstances that led the artist to \u201ccarpe diem\u201d are unknown to me, but in a certain<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">way, I believe it all had something of a protest against the dogmatic clutches and the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">laws of the market, which for some time had been gnawing at the fresh fields of art and life, from which<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he fled like cats flee water. For a time, we had the same art dealer, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cayetano Balaguer\u00f3, who organized several exhibitions for him. Cayetano was from Castell\u00f3 de <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Farfanya, Lleida, like Bernat, his cousin, friend, model, and companion of Miquel Serrano.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With Miquel, anecdotes blossomed like flowers in spring. One of these is the one <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">we experienced together with Santi P\u00e9rez, founder of Pizzeria del Cap de la Vila, on<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">a round trip to Carcassonne, the French walled city rebuilt by Eug\u00e8ne<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Viollet-le-Duc. A bastion of the Cathars. Not for a party, but to help Miquel collect the  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">belongings from his recently deceased sister&#8217;s apartment, of which he was the heir.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We were accompanied by a young man, Toni Sella, who not long ago recounted this adventure<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">in an article, titled \u201cTot \u00e9s fals,\u201d published in these very pages of L\u2019Eco de Sitges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We still all tremble just thinking about it. Serrano was nervous, very nervous, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and in these circumstances, he could cause a tsunami of unfathomable consequences; he<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">forced us to eat a \u201cMarseille casserole\u201d for breakfast. While he smoked tirelessly <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">one cigarette after another, and after withdrawing everything from the bank vault, with the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">documents he himself had forged in Barcelona, to avoid paying lawyers, (Santi<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">did not know until they were in the bank&#8217;s basement). He invited us to lunch. The fifty  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">three towers of Carcassonne spun around us, and the double ring of the walls, of<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">military grey stone, contributed to our terrors, and what if it all ended up in the Museum of Torture<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">of the Inquisition? Afterwards, loaded to the brim, the car like a moving pyramid, and with<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">pockets full of gold doubloons and jewels, which we had to distribute so that the bulge<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">was not too obvious. Like a troop of ancient pirates (Jack Sparrow style), we crossed the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">border without any incident. Ugh! Unforgettable, Miquel Serrano.  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Josep Maria Rossell\u00f3.<\/p>\n<p><!--:--><!--:es--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-964\" alt=\"viewer\" src=\"http:\/\/espairossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png 300w, https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1.png 438w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cCARPE DIEM\u201d, To Miquel Serrano<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the early seventies, in that Sitges which is now a memory, I met the painter<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miquel Serrano. Always, and in any circumstance, polite, charming, elegant, ironic <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and a smoker, a heavy smoker, a \u201cbon vivant\u201d and a drinker, preferably \u201cwhisky\u201d. A regular at the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">terrace of Caf\u00e9 Roy in Sitges, Caf\u00e9 de la \u00d2pera in Barcelona, and Caf\u00e9 de Flore in Paris.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Companion of the Blai brothers, and of Manolo Muntanyola. He did not particularly like talking about art, and <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">even less about his own. He had been a student of Francesc Labarta. In the 1930s, he had painted a portrait from  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">life of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, for the presentation of one of his lectures in<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Barcelona, the Grenadian historian Antonina Rodrigo mentions it in one of her books dedicated<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">to the poet. Serrano rarely spoke of what he had done; he was a friend of Jean Cocteau, and in his apartment <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">on Rambla Catalunya, he had some beautiful drawings of fauns that Cocteau had given him, and he also<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">provided him with contacts in Paris, who commissioned originals for fabric printing,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">which allowed him to live with dignity. An unrepeatable generation. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I was very pleased to learn that a significant exhibition is finally being dedicated to him in Sitges, at<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Espai Miramar. An exhibition curated by Beli Artigas, which brings together the best of his <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">work, almost a retrospective. He probably would have been rather afraid of it, but deep down, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he would have liked it. Yes, he would have liked it very much, because, despite everything, he was tender enough to <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">accept it as a generous display of friendship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I saw some of his works from the 1940s or perhaps 1950s, at the home of Pepa<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gum\u00e0, in Sitges, who had unique works in her collection, which now belongs to her<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">daughters, Silvia and Marta Camps. Many \u201cSerranos\u201d were seen in Sitges, but not like those. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When I organized my exhibition \u201cNeomitologia de Sitges i la Blanca Subur\u201d at the Hotel<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Rom\u00e0ntic, I painted the two large-format works at \u201cCa la Femenina\u201d and the rest at the studio<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">that Serrano had in the apartment above Caf\u00e9 Roy, and which the master kindly lent me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The circumstances that led the artist to \u201ccarpe diem\u201d are unknown to me, but in a certain<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">way, I believe it all had something of a protest against the dogmatic clutches and the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">laws of the market, which for some time had been gnawing at the fresh fields of art and life, from which<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he fled like cats flee water. For a time, we had the same art dealer, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cayetano Balaguer\u00f3, who organized several exhibitions for him. Cayetano was from Castell\u00f3 de <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Farfanya, Lleida, like Bernat, his cousin, friend, model, and companion of Miquel Serrano.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With Miquel, anecdotes blossomed like flowers in spring. One of these is the one <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">we experienced together with Santi P\u00e9rez, founder of Pizzeria del Cap de la Vila, on<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">a round trip to Carcassonne, the French walled city rebuilt by Eug\u00e8ne<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Viollet-le-Duc. A bastion of the Cathars. Not for a party, but to help Miquel collect the  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">belongings from his recently deceased sister&#8217;s apartment, of which he was the heir.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We were accompanied by a young man, Toni Sella, who not long ago recounted this adventure<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">in an article, titled \u201cTot \u00e9s fals,\u201d published in these very pages of L\u2019Eco de Sitges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We still all tremble just thinking about it. Serrano was nervous, very nervous, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and in these circumstances, he could cause a tsunami of unfathomable consequences; he<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">forced us to eat a \u201cMarseille casserole\u201d for breakfast. While he smoked tirelessly <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">one cigarette after another, and after withdrawing everything from the bank vault, with the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">documents he himself had forged in Barcelona, to avoid paying lawyers, (Santi<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">did not know until they were in the bank&#8217;s basement). He invited us to lunch. The fifty  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">three towers of Carcassonne spun around us, and the double ring of the walls, of<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">military grey stone, contributed to our terrors, and what if it all ended up in the Museum of Torture<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">of the Inquisition? Afterwards, loaded to the brim, the car like a moving pyramid, and with<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">pockets full of gold doubloons and jewels, which we had to distribute so that the bulge<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">was not too obvious. Like a troop of ancient pirates (Jack Sparrow style), we crossed the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">border without any incident. Ugh! Unforgettable, Miquel Serrano.  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Josep Maria Rossell\u00f3.<\/p>\n<p><!--:--><!--:en--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-964\" alt=\"viewer\" src=\"http:\/\/espairossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png 300w, https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1.png 438w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cCARPE DIEM\u201d, To Miquel Serrano<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the early seventies, in that Sitges which is now a memory, I met the painter<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miquel Serrano. Always, and in any circumstance, polite, charming, elegant, ironic <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and a smoker, a heavy smoker, a \u201cbon vivant\u201d and a drinker, preferably \u201cwhisky\u201d. A regular at the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">terrace of Caf\u00e9 Roy in Sitges, Caf\u00e9 de la \u00d2pera in Barcelona, and Caf\u00e9 de Flore in Paris.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Companion of the Blai brothers, and of Manolo Muntanyola. He did not particularly like talking about art, and <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">even less about his own. He had been a student of Francesc Labarta. In the 1930s, he had painted a portrait from  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">life of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, for the presentation of one of his lectures in<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Barcelona, the Grenadian historian Antonina Rodrigo mentions it in one of her books dedicated<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">to the poet. Serrano rarely spoke of what he had done; he was a friend of Jean Cocteau, and in his apartment <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">on Rambla Catalunya, he had some beautiful drawings of fauns that Cocteau had given him, and he also<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">provided him with contacts in Paris, who commissioned originals for fabric printing,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">which allowed him to live with dignity. An unrepeatable generation. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I was very pleased to learn that a significant exhibition is finally being dedicated to him in Sitges, at<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Espai Miramar. An exhibition curated by Beli Artigas, which brings together the best of his <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">work, almost a retrospective. He probably would have been rather afraid of it, but deep down, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he would have liked it. Yes, he would have liked it very much, because, despite everything, he was tender enough to <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">accept it as a generous display of friendship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I saw some of his works from the 1940s or perhaps 1950s, at the home of Pepa<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gum\u00e0, in Sitges, who had unique works in her collection, which now belongs to her<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">daughters, Silvia and Marta Camps. Many \u201cSerranos\u201d were seen in Sitges, but not like those. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When I organized my exhibition \u201cNeomitologia de Sitges i la Blanca Subur\u201d at the Hotel<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Rom\u00e0ntic, I painted the two large-format works at \u201cCa la Femenina\u201d and the rest at the studio<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">that Serrano had in the apartment above Caf\u00e9 Roy, and which the master kindly lent me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The circumstances that led the artist to \u201ccarpe diem\u201d are unknown to me, but in a certain<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">way, I believe it all had something of a protest against the dogmatic clutches and the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">laws of the market, which for some time had been gnawing at the fresh fields of art and life, from which<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he fled like cats flee water. For a time, we had the same art dealer, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cayetano Balaguer\u00f3, who organized several exhibitions for him. Cayetano was from Castell\u00f3 de <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Farfanya, Lleida, like Bernat, his cousin, friend, model, and companion of Miquel Serrano.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With Miquel, anecdotes blossomed like flowers in spring. One of these is the one <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">we experienced together with Santi P\u00e9rez, founder of Pizzeria del Cap de la Vila, on<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">a round trip to Carcassonne, the French walled city rebuilt by Eug\u00e8ne<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Viollet-le-Duc. A bastion of the Cathars. Not for a party, but to help Miquel collect the  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">belongings from his recently deceased sister&#8217;s apartment, of which he was the heir.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We were accompanied by a young man, Toni Sella, who not long ago recounted this adventure<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">in an article, titled \u201cTot \u00e9s fals,\u201d published in these very pages of L\u2019Eco de Sitges.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We still all tremble just thinking about it. Serrano was nervous, very nervous, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and in these circumstances, he could cause a tsunami of unfathomable consequences; he<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">forced us to eat a \u201cMarseille casserole\u201d for breakfast. While he smoked tirelessly <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">one cigarette after another, and after withdrawing everything from the bank vault, with the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">documents he himself had forged in Barcelona, to avoid paying lawyers, (Santi<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">did not know until they were in the bank&#8217;s basement). He invited us to lunch. The fifty  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">three towers of Carcassonne spun around us, and the double ring of the walls, of<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">military grey stone, contributed to our terrors, and what if it all ended up in the Museum of Torture<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">of the Inquisition? Afterwards, loaded to the brim, the car like a moving pyramid, and with<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">pockets full of gold doubloons and jewels, which we had to distribute so that the bulge<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">was not too obvious. Like a troop of ancient pirates (Jack Sparrow style), we crossed the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">border without any incident. Ugh! Unforgettable, Miquel Serrano.  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Josep Maria Rossell\u00f3.<\/p>\n<p><!--:--><!--:ru--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-964\" alt=\"viewer\" src=\"http:\/\/espairossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png\" width=\"300\" height=\"258\" srcset=\"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1-300x258.png 300w, https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/viewer1.png 438w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cCARPE DIEM\u201d, To Miquel Serrano<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In the early seventies, in that Sitges which is now a memory, I met the painter<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Miquel Serrano. Always, and in any circumstance, polite, charming, elegant, ironic <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and a smoker, a heavy smoker, a \u201cbon vivant\u201d and a drinker, preferably \u201cwhisky\u201d. A regular at the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">terrace of Caf\u00e9 Roy in Sitges, Caf\u00e9 de la \u00d2pera in Barcelona, and Caf\u00e9 de Flore in Paris.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Companion of the Blai brothers, and of Manolo Muntanyola. He did not particularly like talking about art, and <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">even less about his own. He had been a student of Francesc Labarta. In the 1930s, he had painted a portrait from  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">life of the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, for the presentation of one of his lectures in<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Barcelona, the Grenadian historian Antonina Rodrigo mentions it in one of her books dedicated<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">to the poet. Serrano rarely spoke of what he had done; he was a friend of Jean Cocteau, and in his apartment <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">on Rambla Catalunya, he had some beautiful drawings of fauns that Cocteau had given him, and he also<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">provided him with contacts in Paris, who commissioned original designs for fabric printing,<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">which allowed him to live comfortably. A truly unique generation. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I was very pleased to learn that a significant exhibition is finally being dedicated to him in Sitges, at<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Espai Miramar. An exhibition curated by Beli Artigas, which gathers the very best of his <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">work, almost a retrospective. He would probably have been rather intimidated by it, but deep down, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he would have liked it. Yes, he would have liked it very much, because, despite everything, he was gentle enough to <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">accept it as a generous gesture of friendship.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I saw some of his works from the 1940s or perhaps 1950s at the home of Pepa<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Gum\u00e0 in Sitges, who possessed unique pieces in her collection, which now belongs to her<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">daughters, Silvia and Marta Camps. Many \u201cSerranos\u201d were seen in Sitges, but none quite like those. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When I organized my exhibition \u201cNeomythology of Sitges and the White Suburb\u201d at the Hotel<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Rom\u00e0ntic, I painted the two large-format works at \u201cCa la Femenina\u201d and the rest at the studio<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">that Serrano maintained in the apartment above Caf\u00e9 Roy, and which the master kindly lent me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">I am unaware of the circumstances that led the artist to embrace \u201ccarpe diem,\u201d but in a certain<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">way, I believe it all contained an element of protest against the dogmatic clutches and<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">the laws of the market, which had long been eroding the fertile grounds of art and life, from which<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">he fled as cats flee water. For a time, we shared the same art dealer, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Cayetano Balaguer\u00f3, who organized several exhibitions for him. Cayetano hailed from Castell\u00f3 de <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Farfanya, Lleida, much like Bernat, his cousin, friend, model, and companion to Miquel Serrano.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">With Miquel, anecdotes blossomed like spring flowers. One such anecdote is the one <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">we experienced together with Santi P\u00e9rez, founder of the Pizzeria del Cap de la Vila, during<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">a round trip to Carcassonne, the walled French city rebuilt by Eug\u00e8ne<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Viollet-le-Duc. A bastion of the Cathars. Not for revelry, but to help Miquel collect the  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">belongings from his sister&#8217;s apartment, as she had recently passed away and he was her heir.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We were accompanied by a young man, Toni Sella, who recently recounted this adventure<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">in an article titled \u201cEverything is False,\u201d published in these very pages of L\u2019Eco de Sitges.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We all still tremble at the mere thought of it. Serrano was nervous, extremely nervous, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">and in such circumstances, he could unleash a tsunami of far-reaching consequences. He<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">insisted we eat a \u201cMarseille casserole\u201d for breakfast. While he smoked tirelessly, <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">one cigarette after another, and after retrieving everything from the bank&#8217;s safe deposit box, using the<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">documents he himself had falsified in Barcelona to avoid paying lawyers (Santi<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">did not know until they were in the bank&#8217;s basement). He then invited us to lunch. The fifty-three  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">towers of Carcassonne seemed to spin around us, and the double ring of the walls, made of<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">military grey stone, contributed to our growing fears. What if it all ended up in the Inquisition&#8217;s Torture Museum?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Afterwards, loaded to the brim, the car resembling a mobile pyramid, and with<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">our pockets filled with gold doubloons and jewels, which we had to distribute so that the bulge<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">would not be too obvious. Like a troop of ancient pirates (picture Jack Sparrow), we crossed the <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">border without any incident. Phew! Unforgettable, Miquel Serrano.  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Josep Maria Rossell\u00f3.<\/p>\n<p><!--:--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cCARPE DIEM\u201d, To Miquel Serrano In the early seventies, in that Sitges which is now a memory, I met the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2454,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2451\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josepmariarossello.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}