Why have you started painting hospital bathrooms?
Because, after a life completely free of doctors...
Congratulations!!!
...Eight years ago my first wife suffered leukemia with a bone marrow transplant and five years ago my second wife suffered a cavernoma, which kept her in the Clinical Hospital for eight weeks; Later, I myself suffered a heart attack in the middle of the pandemic, which left me in a coma for six weeks in Sant Pau...
Well, I see him as a kid.
When I came out of the coma, I tried to pick up my cell phone and I couldn't hold it, it kept falling: I had lost my body weight. And I was lucky enough to be rowing in front of the Hospital del Mar when I suffered cardiac arrest while rowing.
Wouldn't you go overboard?
On the contrary, my father died of a heart attack at 60 and I am sure that if I had not rowed with the conviction and method with which I still do – today I have been giving the oars an hour – I would not be here.
Let's row: do you remember anything about the coma?
It was like a long dream of which I can barely recall vague episodes. What I do remember clearly is the doctors' faces when they looked at my medical history when I woke up. They stared at me, incredulous, as if saying: “What is this guy doing here?”
And what did you do?
To the gym! And, as soon as I could, to row again to the Marítim, as always.
Can you get to Rome by rowing?
My father died young; but my mother lived 100 years... That's what I'm up to.
While you were convalescing, did you start painting in the hospital?
When my wife had surgery, I began to know what it was like to be sick in a hospital. I had only been there 50 years before because of a motorcycle accident. So, a hospital was very precarious.
Any past time was previous.
However, today when I went to paint rooms I saw the neurosurgery area and it is between a five star and NASA. So I decided to dedicate something to the Clinic and this book came out: look.
I'd rather keep it...
I spent the day taking notes and, when it was published and my wife arrived for rehabilitation at the Guttmann clinic in La Sagrera, the management proposed that I paint a mural on the façade measuring 6 x 34 meters with a painting like the one on the buses, which it is transparent. And I drew a representation of the Sagrera.
It's still there, splendid.
And, in addition, we put on an exhibition on rehabilitation.
They work miracles at Guttmann!
I have exhibited 105 paintings, but very far from the topics of “science and charity.”
How to avoid clichés?
Surprising and that forced me to use a lot of turquoise, blue and ocher.
Can formal limitation end up being a creative springboard?
That's what I thought when they also called me from the Mar hospital to paint on the walls of the room's sinks.
Why did you become an artist?
I was born in La Seu d'Urgell and already there in the nuns I was not able to attend class if I was not drawing. And they left me. The same thing happened to me at the French Lyceum in Barcelona and in the Aula and at La Salle. And my grandmother, who was French-Swiss, gave me carte blanche to buy all the notebooks and colors I wanted.
Did you continue to support him when he was older?
They tricked me into starting architecture, but in the end I resigned myself to dedicating myself to painting; I did the military; I spent a year in Cadaqués selling drawings and...
How did you end up publishing in The New York Times and La Vanguardia?
A friend told me that Angel Ribé had half a loft for rent in New York: I asked the family for a loan and I went there with my girlfriend: to the Bowery. And for weeks I paraded a portfolio with my drawings in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice...
How difficult!
On the contrary, little by little I made my way and they paid me a lot, and I discovered that illustration was not only a way to survive: it was my life. I was like Obelix fallen into the cauldron of searching for an image that would enrich the text. And so I lived and painted and painted and lived for twelve years in New York.
Can I credit you here now as “resurrected illustrator of the Bible”?
In Fine Arts, being an illustrator is close to pedophilia, but it makes me proud and enriched every day to face a text. With each work I try to establish a tension with the headline that attracts the reader.
Does the hospital talk about your art?
Art is like sex, everyone practices it and illustration is one of its everyday forms. I would like my painting for the hospital to be like an armchair, also comfortable for whoever accompanies you, because I do not paint to teach, but to learn and surprise myself.
