Why did you start painting the toilets in a hospital?
Because, after a life completely free of doctors...
Congratulations!!!
...Eight years ago my first wife suffered from leukemia with a bone marrow transplant and five years ago my second wife suffered from a cavernous hemangioma, which kept her in the Clínic hospital for eight weeks; later, I myself had a heart attack in the middle of the pandemic: six weeks in a coma in Sant Pau...
Well, I see him very rejuvenated.
When I came out of the coma, I tried to pick up my mobile phone and I couldn't, I was falling: I had run out of exercise. And I was lucky enough to be rowing in front of the Hospital del Mar when I suffered cardiac arrest.
Shouldn't you have gone too far in the effort?
On the contrary, my father died of a heart attack at the age of 60 and I am sure that if he had not rowed with the conviction and method with which I still do - I have been rowing for an hour today - I would not be here.
Remem: Do you remember anything about coma?
It was like a long sleep of which I can scarcely conjure up vague episodes. What I do remember clearly is the faces of the doctors when they looked at my medical history when I woke up. They kept looking at me, incredulous, as if saying: "This one, what is he doing here?".
And what did you do?
In the gym! And, when I could, to row again in the Marítimo, as always.
Do you get to Rome by rowing?
My father died young; but my mother lived to be 100 years old... That's what I aspire to.
While you were convalescing, did you start painting in the hospital?
When my wife was operated on I already began to know what it was like to be sick in a hospital. I had only been there 50 years before because of a motorbike accident. Back then, a hospital was very precarious.
Any past time was previous.
On the other hand, 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 I came up with this book: check it out.
I'd rather keep it...
I spent the day there taking notes and, when it was published and my wife arrived for rehabilitation at the Guttmann clinic in La Sagrera, the management proposed to me to paint a 6 x 34 meter mural on the facade with transparent paint like the buses. And I drew a representation of the Sagrera.
And there it continues, splendid.
And we do an exhibition on rehabilitation.
Guttmann works miracles!
I have exhibited 105 paintings, but very far from the clichés of "science and charity".
How can clichés be avoided?
Amazing, and this forced me to use a lot of turquoise, blue and ocher.
Can formal limitation end up being a creative springboard?
This is what I thought when I was also asked at the Hospital del Mar to paint on the walls of the toilets in the rooms.
Why did you become an artist?
I was born in La Seu d'Urgell and I couldn't listen to the nuns in class if I wasn't drawing. And they allowed me to. The same happened at the French Liceu in Barcelona, at the Aula and at La Salle. My grandmother, who was French-Swiss, gave me carte blanche to buy whatever notebooks and colors I wanted.
Did they continue to support him as an adult?
They tricked me into starting architecture, but in the end I resigned myself to painting; I did the mili; I spent a year in Cadaqués selling cartoons and...
How did he get published in The New York Times and La Vanguardia?
A friend told me that Àngels Ribé rented half a loft in New York, on the Bowery: I asked the family for a loan and left with my girlfriend. For weeks I carried a folder 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 very well; I discovered that illustration wasn't just a way to survive - it was my life. It was like Obelix falling into the pot in search of an image to enrich the text. And so I lived and painted for twelve years in New York.
Can I credit him here now as a “resurrected Bible illustrator”?
In Fine Arts, being an illustrator comes close to pedophilia, but for me it makes me proud and enriches to face a text every day. I try to establish with each work a tension with the title 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 a comfortable seat for whoever accompanies you: I don't paint to teach, but to learn and surprise myself.
