One more portrait: great great artist, Marcos Palazzi. /  by Toni Ricart

I meet Marcos Palazzi in his studio, an old factory in the Rivera neighborhood. He is a fascinating personage, like his paintings that cover the walls of the studio. As we talk, he writes down on a piece of paper names and information that come up during the conversation. Palazzi's work is so powerful that it is hard to understand why he does not have greater recognition. He himself speaks of his work with excessive modesty. A great lover of comics, he tells me that our well-remembered mutual friend Gallardo asked him why he did not draw comics, and he tells me "but I have nothing to explain!". I point out to him, incredulous, his magnificent paintings. "Okay, yes, all right," he replies, "but this is something else..."

Marcos Palazzi is a figurative painter of portraits and scenes of the unusual and the ordinary. His characters live absurd situations in environments where details, apparently irrelevant, become fascinating and even humorous.
As he himself explains: "I was always drawing with a pencil and I started painting at the age of eighteen when I entered at EINA school thanks to one of my teachers, Serra de Rivera. I entered EINA with the idea of doing design but I soon switched to art. Afterwards I enrolled at La Massana and later at La Llotja. In all the schools I went through I had very good teachers. I also liked comics and I loved going to exhibitions and museums like the old MNAC, which was in La Ciutadella. There I got immersed in painting. I was alone and I would spend hours in front of a painting.
I don't know how to define my art. It's quite similar to the music I listen to and the books I read. I can say it's a bit eclectic. I like to vary the classical look on what surrounds me. Light is key. I like artificial light and I put the focus on what I want to show."

Since 1992 he has exhibited in Barcelona, Bologna, Berlin, Centelles, Geneva, Girona, London, Madrid, Milan, Monaco, New York, Reus, Sant Cugat, Santiago de Chile, Zaragoza, Tarragona.


 

Toni Casares, for "Barcelona valors afegits" /  by Toni Ricart

I haven't seen Toni for a long time, I think since he came on vacation when I was living in Montreal, in 1997. I find him unchanged and very enthusiastic, as always, about theater. He welcomes me at the flamboyant Sala Beckett, in Poble Nou, an unquestionable reference point for theater in Barcelona. As he shows me around the facilities I realize how passionate he is about it and how lucky he feels to be doing his job. I tell him, apologizing, that I rarely go to the theater, almost never, in line with the reasons given by Quim Monzó in his famous talk Why I don't go to the theater, and he answers that he likes the theater precisely for the same reasons that Monzó doesn't like it.

Toni Casares is the director of the Sala Beckett/Obrador Internacional de Dramaturgia. With a degree in Catalan Philology from the UAB and a postgraduate degree in Theory and Criticism of Theatre Performance, he was a founding member of the UAB's Theatre Classroom, of which he was artistic director from 1992 to 2004, as well as head of the university's Live Culture Program.

Between 1989 and 1992 he was General Coordinator of the Centre Dramàtic de la Generalitat de Catalunya. In 1997 he took over the direction of the Sala Beckett in Barcelona, to which he had been linked since its foundation.

He has directed shows of international contemporary authorship, with special attention to Catalan authorship, with texts by Sergi Belbel, J.M. Benet y Jornet, Martin Crimp, Pau Miró, Mercè Rodoreda, Mercè Sarrias, Roland Schimmelpfennig, or Fréderic Sonntag, among others. He is the author of Aquí s’aprèn poca cosa, the theatrical adaptation of the novel Jakob Von Guntten, by Robert Walser.

(Between 2005 and 2012 he was a member of the Advisory Council of the National Theater of Catalonia, and between 2011 and 2016, a member of the executive committee of the Barcelona Culture Council. He is currently a member of the Advisory Council for the Performing Arts of the Ministry of Culture).

Lucia Fumero, a great artist portrait for "Barcelona valors afegits" /  by Toni Ricart

Lucia's flat, in the Sants neighbourhood, is a small oasis where the sunshine breaks through and seems to come from somewhere else. In the midst of an almost harmonious disorder, she composes and performs her pieces, surrounded by plants and her cats Tofu and Mora. On a music stand I see the score of Radio Rewrite by Steve Reich. She tells me that she is studying this piece to conduct it soon at the Barcelona Auditorium.

With an enviable vitality and a contagious smile, she explains to me how she went to Holland, where she studied world music, perhaps in an unconscious reflex to seek something beyond jazz, which is already part of her DNA. And how she later came back to Barcelona, where she continued studying at the ESMUC, mostly - she explains - to get to know other musicians. And since then she hasn't stopped, playing with the best musicians and composing wonders like her latest album, Universo normal. In her own words, "Universo normal is a door to my imagination. That's why it's normal. And that's why it's a universe. It's a concept that inspires magic, something huge like the universe, but at the same time concentrates on something very basic, rootsy, like folk music. "

Lucia Fumero is a pianist and singer born in Barcelona, with Argentinian and Swiss roots. She began studying classical music at the Municipal Conservatory of Barcelona, where she graduated with the Grado Profesional de Música in 2010. She then travelled to Holland to continue studying and working. There, at the Rotterdam University of Music, she studied a higher degree in modern music specialising in Latin music. She is now in her final year at the ESMUC specialising in jazz piano. She has participated as a musician in many different ensembles of different styles and has released her first album with original music. She often collaborates with the new generation of Barcelona musicians such as Rita Payés, Nico Roig, Pol Batller and Martín Meléndez, among others.


Portraying Cristina Blanch for "Barcelona valors afegits". /  by Toni Ricart

Cristina welcomes me at her studio, which is also her art school. An apartment in the Gracia district, full of hidden and charming spaces. We talk about Barcelona, about artists and galleries, and about her work. I observe the elegance of her movements and the attractive mix of irony and self-assurance she has when she talks. She tells me that she likes to paint watercolors more than oil paintings and shows me some magnificent portraits in small format. I admire her oil paintings, which are also very good, often resolved with unexpected resources. She tells me how, for her latest project, she gets her inspiration from listening to crime podcasts in order to imagine and recreate the scenarios: mysterious houses lost in the middle of nowhere.

Cristina Blanch studied art at the ESAG Penninghen in Paris. Creator and director of the Blanch Art School, founded in 1990 in Barcelona, she has developed in parallel her activity as a painter with exhibitions in Barcelona, Madrid, Italy, Hong Kong and Singapore.

David Ruiz, new portrait for "Barcelona valoRs afegits" /  by Toni Ricart

In addition to being an excellent creative, David Ruiz is an expert sailor, who has crossed the Atlantic five times and who one day closed his agency and decided to sail around the world solo, aboard his sailboat Thor, for four years.
I devoured his book "irse," (Going away) in which he narrates his adventure, and I immediately contacted him for a portrait. I think this is the first time I have portrayed someone who, for me, is a hero, in the most literary sense of the word. And it turns out that this hero is a very interesting, kind and funny guy. I photograph him at his studio in Poble Nou and we talk, of course, about sailboats, the sea and his journey. And about how he now has little wish to sail, to go out for a few hours for a ride like he did before, because everything has a different dimension, a different meaning.
Behind his gaze one can guess an envyable, almost ancestral wisdom, like that of those who have seen many things and have lived very intensely, but who, above all, have learned to be humble in front of nature's immensity.

After nine years working as an art director and creative director in various multinational advertising agencies, in 1993 he founded his own studio: ruizcompany. With no boundaries between advertising and graphic design, projects are developed under the common denominator of creativity.
He has been awarded 119 international prizes to date in all disciplines, including: Grand Prix festival Clio in San Francisco, gold medal of the Art Directors Club of New York, 2 lions at the Cannes International Festival, 6 Red Dot Awards, as well as 5 Laus gold trophies and 14 silver in Spain.
A member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) since 1997, he has been a juror in various international competitions and has given lectures all over the world.

One more portrait for "Barcelona Valors Afegits": Javier Pérez Andújar /  by Toni Ricart

I meet Javier at the station of Sant Adrià del Besòs, his hometown, and he guides me through the beach and the streets near the train tracks, landscapes of his childhood and youth. It's a rainy day, almost in black and white, very appropriate for the portrait session. Today the sea is angry, and we stand for a while to admire it, always under the exaggerated presence of the old thermal power plant chimneys.
Javier has a shy, modest appearance, like someone who does not want to bother. But behind this discreet aspect, there is a character with a very rich world, with an original and surprising discourse where humor, the fiercest criticism, erudition and surrealism are mixed. I tell him how much I liked his latest book El año del Búfalo, which he is promoting these days all over Spain, and I ask him what other book of his he recommends. Paseos con mi madre, he tells me smiling, is the one that people like the most.

Javier Pérez Andújar has a degree in Hispanic Philology from the University of Barcelona.
Author of the books Los príncipes valientes (finalist for the Premio de Novela Fundación Lara 2007, and Premio Qwerty de BTV 2008 to the revelation author in Spanish), Salvador Dalí: A la conquista de lo irracional, Todo lo que se llevó el diablo, Paseos con mi madre, Milagro en Barcelona (with photographs by Joan Guerrero), Catalanes todos, Diccionario enciclopédico de la vieja escuela (Estado Crítico essay award 2016), La noche fenomenal and El año del Búfalo (Herralde novel award 2021).
He currently collaborates in the radio program A Vivir Que Son Dos Días (cadena SER) and in the supplement Llegim of the newspaper Ara. He has also collaborated in the television programs Saló de Lectura (BTV) and L'Hora del Lector (Canal 33); in the magazines Taifa, of which he was editor-in-chief, El Ciervo, Tapas Magazine, Ajoblanco, Rockdelux, Globe, and in the newspapers El Periódico de Catalunya and El País. In 2014 he received the City of Barcelona Media Award for his chronicles published in the catalan edition of El País. He has also collaborated in the fanzine Mondo Brutto and was co-founder of the fanzines Flandis Mandis and Lardín. He has translated into Spanish the Asterix album: El cielo se nos cae encima! (Salvat, 2005).

Artist Perico Pastor, new portrait for "Barcelona Valors Afegits" /  by Toni Ricart

Perico walks around his bright studio in Poble Nou with the calm agility of a cat. He is a friendly and attentive character, with a wise irony always at the forefront of his mind. We talk about the advantages and disadvantages of working alone, about Picasso's women - after all, Picasso was a bastard, but a bastard without malice -, about the tricks of the world of galleries and about the Japanese paper he uses to paint, so delicate that it can melt if you put it under running water.

And then he starts to paint and I continue to shoot, captivated by the elegance and fluidity of his movements with the brush.

Perico Pastor was born in la Seu d’Urgell in 1953.  After a few years in Barcelona, studying matters which had nothing to do with Art and off which he dropped because he was always busy drawing, he left for New York in 1976. There he spent twelve years of comfortable bohemian life sponsored by freelance work done for The New York Times and other periodicals. That allowed him to do his own stuff, which, after a while attracted enough interest from gallerists to make a living from it –without ever abandoning illustration.

In 1980 he had his first show, at the Cornelia Street Café, in New York, and in 1983 his first gallery show at Madrid’s Galeria Estampa. Ever since, he has pursued painting and illustration and has showed his work in Barcelona, Madrid, Granada, Hong Kong, Paris, New York, Tokyo, Sag Harbor, Miami, Pekin, Lleida…

He has lived in Barcelona since 1989, painting, publishing his illustrations in newspapers (El Pais, International Herald Tribune, La Vanguardia,) and in books (Amigos, El Pequeño Cuento, The Bible), and various projects.

Married, a father of four boys, a keen rower and cross-country skier, he is addicted to reading and music, and a competent cook.

Marc Hors, new portrait /  by Toni Ricart

I photographed Marc at Atelier Güell, the art space he manages in the Arrabal neighbourhood with his wife Indira Urrutia, which is an interesting alternative to traditional art galleries. He is exhibiting his latest project "Portraits of Dignity", about the refugees in the camps in Greece, based on his statement, so true, that "we are all refugees".

Marc speaks in a calm tone and with such a discreet attitude that it is surprising to discover the trajectory he has been building up. Especially since his fascinating journey that led him to cross the American continent from one end to the other, by bicycle, for five years.

Marc Hors is a documentary photographer and storyteller. His artistic approach is one of capturing the social and cultural nuances of individuals, friendships, and families within the collective situations they inhabit. His images serve as an invitation to peer into private and intimate worlds that have been made all the more complex due to the socio/political/economic contexts that shape them. It is in this manner that Hor’s gently crafts his portraits so as to spark curiosity and critical thinking with regards to environmental and human rights issues, and social change. He shows human beings in human-made situations, in all their splendor, nuance, hardship, and terrible beauty, making neither an attempt to shock or minimize but forging a window through which the viewer can glimpse, and possibly discover, the felt existence of the being within the image.

In 2007, Marc embarked on a 5-year photographic project in search of natural, social and cultural values that characterize the countries of the American continent. As a way of transportation but also as a multicultural passport he chooses the bicycle. Stating in Alaska, he ended in Puerto Williams, the Chilean Antarctic after 5 years, 20.000 miles, and 14 countries.

Marc Hors website

New photo book: "silenci" /  by Toni Ricart

After the edition of the box "silenci", multistudioBOOKS has just published the photobook "Silenci", with a similar content to the box, but more extensive and in book format. "Silenci" is a photographic reflection on silence, in a fine edition of 52 pages, hard cover, and includes an original print in pigmented inks on Epson Enhanced Matte paper, signed and numbered. "Silenci" is a limited edition of 100 copies.