My visit to the Portal del Pardo, the current headquarters of the Fundació Fenosa, coincides with the dates on which the Fenosas used to settle in this large house in Vendrell to live and share their “seasonal life”. They arrived in May and returned to Paris in the fall.
The sensation of being submerged in a special atmosphere is completed by the intense “Rusiñol blue” that dresses the patio and the gallery, as well as parts of the interior of the palace, the perfume of Nicole's lemon tree loaded with shimmering wisps of yellow light, the majesty of a large cypress, the olive tree, so present in the sculptor's work as a symbol of peace, a tree with which the artist identified because it was common in the Catalan landscape of his childhood, in Almatret, and roses, pink and white, that surround Polyphemus (1949), in bronze that gropes with its hands, open and disproportionate, the sheep inside whose fur Ulysses has hidden. Roses from cuttings of the rose bush that accompanied the Apel.les tomb in Montparnasse and that Nicole had brought to El Vendrell, grafting them with the help of the gardener and friend of the Fenosas, Joan Aribau.
The former director of the Foundation, Josep Miquel García, evokes moments that have indelibly marked him. -“When Fenosa had already passed away, Shynya Nakamura, one of the sculptor's Japanese assistants, who was about to die, traveled to El Vendrell and asked to be alone in the garden to say goodbye to the spirit of his great friend Apel.les . It was impressive to see that man with white hair sitting, in silence, in front of the olive tree that Fenosa planted. ”-Says Josep Miquel.
Jean-Marie del Moral made series of photographs of Fenosa's house and studio in El Vendrell for years, collected in his book La Casa del Escultor (2021): "Every summer I spent several days in the Vendrell house and I started with Apel.les a long-term work on that duality of life between Paris and Vendrell. We had a very close and very faithful friendship until the end of their lives."
After the success of the Apel.les show at the Galería Jardín in Barcelona in 1957, the Fenosas decided to buy a house in Catalonia. They found a palace in El Vendrell, El Portal del Pardo, in the oldest building in the town, (the first reference dates from 1518 when it belonged to one of the “vendrellencas” families, the Nin), and thanks to the support of many of the friends of the marriage could be bought.
The poet Tristan Tzara will act as an intermediary to sell a drawing that Picasso gave Fenosa as a gift, and a painting from the blue period. Matilde Folch, then owner of the palace, finalized the sale to the Fenosa family in 1958.
In the first summer in the old Casa Nin, popularly called Portal del Pardo (although Fenosa called it El Perdó to avoid any reference to Franco's residence), Nicole and Apel.les settled with Mizui, the sculptor's Japanese assistant, his wife Kyoko and the Fenosa cat, Manon, who were the first tenants of the new stage of the Vendrell house, soberly rehabilitating the place.
Soon the place will be filled with friends, eager to share and work with them in the luminous summers of Tarragona, among others: Tristan Tzara, Cecile Eluard daughter of the poet Paul Eluard, the actor Jean Marais, the bookseller and publisher Lucien Scheler, the writer Jean Cocteau, the pianist Evelyne Dubourg, Ursula Schoroeder daughter of the psychiatrist Prinzhorn, Joan Gili the bookseller, Joan Perucho, the painter Manuel Humbert, Julio Lacambre, Michael Cournot and Nella Bielski, the gallery owner Henriette Gomas, Alexandre Cirici art critic and Josep Granyer .
In this house-palace, a lighthouse due to its strategic location in Tarragona, from which the Mediterranean can be glimpsed, flows, in a present-past, the memory of many happy moments such as summer meals. At the beginning, Anita Fernández, a neighbor of the town who knew the traditional recipes of Tarragona, cooked typical dishes for the Fenosas and her friends in the summer. Both the bibliophile and gourmet, Irving Davis, a gastronomy scholar, and Patience Gray, writer and journalist for The Observer, thought that these delicious recipes for escudella i carn d'olla, gigot de cordero, conill amb cargol i xocolata sauce or Nadal sauce, had to be shared. In 1969, the book appeared, A Catalan Cookery Book, a collection of impossible recipes, by Joseph Irving Davis and Nicole Florense. Illustrated with 11 engravings by Nicole. The copy is a highly coveted recipe book as it was the first book dedicated to Catalan gastronomy, published abroad and conceived as a limited edition object of 165 copies.
Nicole Damote's personal story developed in harmony with the figure of the renowned Catalan sculptor Apel.les Fenosa. In fact, she took the last name, Florensa, in honor of his mother, Casilda Florensa, with which she will sign her works. The plural self was imposed from the beginning of the relationship.
"They formed a perfect pairing," says the Catalan sculptor Philippe Lavaill. Fenosa came to a show I did in Vendrell, she bought me a piece and asked me to be her assistant. The Fenosas withdrew from the show. They weren't trapped by the character. They were authentic. Money was something accessory for them, it was only necessary to cast the pieces in bronze. After working for them, the other artists are little.
Nicole Damote was born in Paris on November 30, 1925 and met Fenosa in 1946, at the age of 19. Apel.les 46 years old, she was already an artist fully integrated into the cultural scene of the Parisian artistic avant-garde. The sculptor belonged to Picasso's inner circle, who became his main collector.
“Fenosa was the artist from whom Picasso collected the greatest number of works. I don't understand how the figure of this extraordinary sculptor is not more well known in this country”, says photographer Jean Marie del Moral.
Later, in 1924, the artist from Malaga sponsored his first exhibition together with Pere Pruna, in the French capital at the Galerie Percier. Picasso also introduced him to his circle of friends: Paul Eluard, Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau, Jules Supervielle, Henry Michaux, Dora Maar and Coco Chanel, with whom Fenosa had a loving relationship, and Brasaï, among others. The foreword to his catalog was written by the poet Max Jacob. His second exhibition, already solo, would be four years later at the Galerie Zborowski.
It is not difficult to imagine that the young Nicole - "Physically a mixture of the actresses Brigitte Bardot and Silvia Montfort", of great education, culture, and "savoir faire" - says Del Moral - felt great admiration for the sculptor's personality.
Nicole and Apel.les were married civilly and religiously in 1948 with a Chanel dress, gift and design, and a Jean Boy hat. The Portuguese artist María Helena Vieira da Silva (Lisbon 1908) encouraged Nicole to find her own path as an artist. Thanks to her support, he had her first exhibition at the Denise Renard Gallery, and later at the Coard Gallery. It was then that Nicole decided to sign her works as Florensa. She, "she didn't used to talk about her facet as an artist," says Mercé Doñate, who was head of the Area d'Art Modern at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC).
Lluís Boada, who met Nicole in the summer of 2001 when he began his thesis on the Catalan painter and personal friend of Fenosa, Manuel Humbert (1890-1975) tells: -"Nicole did not live in Fenosa's shadow but rather "in the sun” of the relationship, close-up. Her great work would be to leave this place, the Fenosa Foundation, protecting the sculptor's legacy. It was an absolute dedication of life to his memory. Nicole's role has been decisive for people to continue talking about Fenosa today”-says Boada.
In the same way, Montserrat Massot, who met Nicole and Apel.les, expressed it when she was very young, in the 80s in Paris: -“Nicole was an extremely organized person, very active and very demanding, with everything related to Fenosa. She worked tirelessly. Her obsession was that the sculptor's work should not be lost. She was very cultured. She is sweet, but with a lot of character, with fixed ideas. Very generous, both Apel.les and her helped the artists who came to Paris a lot. They were people with high “esprit”. They always contributed to improving the lives of others” -says Massot
Fenosa and Nicole liked to go on excursions and show the Catalan landscapes to their friends and for this they traveled, in a caravan of cars, routes to the Priory, the 12th century Cartuja de Escaladei, Santes Creus and Poblet, Prades, Ciurana and Vallbona. Other times, at dusk, they used to go down to Torredembarra to attend, in "Baixa Mar", the arrival of the huge Latin boats, which went to sea to fish for mackerel and sardines in the light.
Despite the time that has elapsed since the Fenosas spent their summers in El Vendrell, emotions are still very much alive and entering this house-rhizome, with so much “layer of life” is like accessing an inhabited poem.
Nicole's studio is preserved just as she left it. She is impressed by accessing the delicate, austere, elegant, beautiful room, absent like a silent symphony. As in an eternal wait, two empty chairs, one Tonet and the other rustic cattail, two tables, glass jars..., are part of an orderly props of absence. On an easel, a small canvas of a delicate landscape with a Zen aesthetic, captures all the attention of this "still installation", of this ethereal and harmonic scenery, which can be contemplated calmly, in what was once the place where Nicole Florensa succeeded as an artist.
Recognition of Nicole's work in Spain came in 2008 when the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid exhibited an anthology of her work and a catalog of it was published.
If in Fenosa's work, her mark is her fingers, her energetic trace, Nicole's traces will be her eyes, traces that expand towards her engravings, her watercolors and drawings, towards her photographs. These, trained for the methodical testimonial will of the biographical, the daily and intimate, are mixed with the portrait of the sociological and anthropological.
Nicole will leave us with an open and mythological memory, of the chronological description of what their lives were like in her photographic work: ”La Força del Record” (2010), which reflects scenes of daily life in Vendrell in the 50s and 60s.
After the death of Apel.les, on March 25, 1899, the artist, who survived him by twenty-four years, will continue to work tirelessly. Nicole Florense's contribution is decisive for the study of Fenosa's work with the edition of the catalog raisonné (2002) of her sculptural and graphic work, which was an exhaustive research effort.
Another of Nicole's objectives was to recover the bust of Dora Maar from 1939-1940, which Picasso commissioned from Apel.les Fenosa during their years of friendship in Paris and which he finished together with the artist from Malaga. Known as "Portrait with four hands", the bust of Dora Maar, thanks to Nicole, is part of the Foundation's collection.
-“Nicole's greatest work was Fenosa”- affirms the former director of the Foundation, Josep Miquel García. She told me: “I am a Cartesian” and thanks to that methodical character, her work, her philosophy of life, this artist has been able to reach the present ”.
In the last years of her life, Nicole created the Fundació Fenosa and in 2002 the sculptor's museum. In addition to donating the Renaissance palace to the Fundació, Nicole also bequeathed the workshop collection of originals in terracotta and bronzes of different sizes made by Fenosa, as well as all of the artist's drawings.
Nekane Aramburu, the new director of the Fundació Fenosa assures: -“My wish is the projection of the entity in its proximity framework and the internationalization of the Foundation for all that the figures and the mythical universe of Apel.les Fenosa and Nicole Florensa, as well as returning to this monumental space the spirit of a meeting place, of an open house where heritage, hospitality and creation merge”.
Guided by this ray of “blue light” from this still-existing Vendrell lighthouse, of which the Japanese poet Miyazawa tells us, let us go back to the future and become guests of the Fundació Fenosa, the work of Nicole Florensa.
