With her violation of the force of gravity and all the norms that give solidity to architecture, the Catalan artist Cinta Vidal (Barcelona, 1982) has become a muralist sought after and invited by institutions and festivals around the world. Her works, which often transform sober walls into floating and magnetic neighborhoods and cities, can be seen in Canada, Italy, Portugal, Los Angeles, Hong Kong or Miami. Closer, you can also find his works in Granollers, Cardedeu or Barcelona.
But neither this unleashed passion nor the parallel success achieved by her paintings in galleries in London, San Francisco, New York, Hong Kong or Melbourne have been a siren song capable of keeping her away from Cardedeu, the town where she has lived since her parents moved when she was nine years old. In fact, the only mermaid he talks about – with that retrospective and moving shame that some childhood memories provoke – is Disney's Little Mermaid, a character he compulsively copied – “it amazed me that so many things could be said by drawing,” he comments. – and from whose aesthetics he consciously distanced himself as he grew up and discovered the great masters of painting, such as Vermeer.
Part of those drawings are still preserved in boxes guarded by his mother, Montserrat Agulló, who for many years ran the El Gat Corneli toy store. There, Cinta helped with the windows and posters. Her father, Jordi Vidal, the son of meteorological physicists and whom she defines as “a bit of a genius inventor,” was in charge of the design and construction of artifacts that announced the wonders that awaited the establishment.
Likewise, during visits to her paternal grandmother she witnessed the miracle of the appearance of great works of art history that the meteorologist copied. In that environment, she followed in the footsteps of the eldest of her three siblings, Maria Vidal, who always had pencils, colors and paper nearby, which became Cinta's favorite toy. She opted for the Massana School after observing Maria's frustration with her because at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Barcelona "they were obsessed with her abstraction and did not let her do figuration." She enjoyed the years of training in illustration, especially with the teachings of Arnal Ballester and Daniel Sesé.
His conception of artistic practice has a lot to do with the idea of trade and craftsmanship. He assures that this is largely the case because he started working at Taller d'Escenografía Castells at the age of 16, founded by the brothers Jordi and Josep Castells i Planas, a leading company in the Catalan and state theater sector, with recognitions such as Creu de Sant Jordi. “When I entered there, I had no idea about anything, I was a teenager, I found myself in an environment in which the scenery for the Olympic Games had been made, by Dagoll Dagom, La Cubana, Comediants… You discover a world that surpasses you and it fascinates you,” he remembers. She learned to paint on a large scale, to respect delivery deadlines and what was projected by the set designer. And an important lesson: you cannot consider that you have mastered a craft until you have dedicated 10,000 hours to it.
In all the time spent with the scenography, “I painted curtains, and what I had to do were spaces, not characters, which are the actors. “So I acquired a kind of love for space, for how the environment speaks and tells stories.” His murals make evident his passion for architecture and construction. He is amused when some architect tells her that he envies her for her freedom. In her impossible buildings there are those who believe they see the influence of Maurits Cornelis Escher, which she barely notices. On the other hand, she is proud of the echo of the solitary characters created by Hopper that is perceived in her figures. The people in Cinta Vidal's paintings and murals, which have recently been gaining more presence, like the floating constructions, are accessible and in another dimension: “When I was a teenager and I had the need to interpret the world, at that moment in Since you can't quite place yourself, I started drawing playing with gravity, with characters who are both very close and very far away.
He made his first mural in 2015 for a bar in Barcelona, in which he reinterpreted the life that took place inside the premises. That same year, the American magazine Hi-Fructose Magazine covered her first exhibition at the Barcelona gallery Miscelánea, and since then the international proposals have not stopped.
To create his murals, in most cases he has had the collaboration of Helena Salvador, a scenery painter whom he met in the Castells i Planas workshop. He believes it is essential that each mural be integrated into its environment, which requires meticulous research into the customs of the local population. She feels especially proud of the one she made at the Honolulu Museum of Art in 2017, because it still serves today to help schoolchildren recognize and reflect on fundamental elements of her culture.
The pandemic, with the reduction in stage activity that it entailed, allowed Cinta Vidal to focus more on her paintings. She exhibits them mainly in the United States through the Thinkspace gallery, with great sales success. Among the many visitors to her exhibitions are celebrities such as British musician Curt Smith, co-founder of the group Tears For Fears. The group has illustrated their album The tipping Point with a work by the Catalan artist: “It's nice because they haven't chosen the image randomly or just because they like it. She told me that the album had many similarities conceptually with my paintings, the variation of the points of view, the fact of being all in the same place but distant, the balances…”.
As for next projects, in April he will carry out an artistic residency in Rome with which he wants to enter the world of screen printing, and for September he is preparing an exhibition in Germany of a series of paintings that he considers more organic. He aspires for his characters to be more representative of current society, although they must continue to maintain the mystery that makes them weightless and inhabitants of fascinatingly impossible worlds.
