African art flourishes in Palafrugell

The French painter, sculptor, and collector Guy Ferrer, born in Algeria seventy years ago, has a remarkable collection of contemporary African art, including pieces from Angola, Burkina Faso, South Africa, Cameroon, Mozambique, and Nigeria, among other countries on the continent where he spent his early childhood. A selection from this collection, based in Perpignan, can now be seen, for the first time in Spain, at La Bòbila in Palafrugell, which houses some seventy works by African artists from the 1950s to the present.

Most of them are works by emerging artists, some of whom work on poor supports that demonstrate both the lack of resources and the sharp ingenuity of their creators. Coffee sacks, pieces of denim clothing, tarps, wooden panels, and computer keyboards are used to capture compositions whose themes "show us the shame of the West," according to curator Toni Álvarez de Arana. Famine, water scarcity, colonization, rage, war, the imposition of religion, and the plundering of mineral resources such as gold are some of the themes that appear in the paintings on display in this exhibition, titled "An International Perspective ."

The MAP aims to turn the municipality into the nerve center of southern Europe for contemporary art.

A maternity exhibition in which a woman holds a baby in one hand and a Kalashnikov in the other, a work by South African artist Ayanda Mabulu, is particularly striking. Also noteworthy is the work of South African artist and feminist activist Lady Skollie, who explores the objectification of women. “These are works we're not used to seeing, art that directly addresses the viewer,” emphasizes Álvarez, curator of the Palafrugell Art Museum (MAP), which brings together five other exhibitions that will turn this Costa Brava municipality into a meeting point for contemporary art until next October.

As an artist, rather than a collector, Guy Ferrer exhibits TOLERANCE , a monumental sculptural installation consisting of nine bronze human figures, each representing a letter of the word "tolerance" and one of the world's great religions or cultures. After previously being exhibited in venues in Paris, Luxembourg, Abu Dhabi, and Carcassonne, this work by Ferrer, who settled in Canet de Rousillon in 2012, is coming to Catalonia for the first time. The piece is a call for coexistence, peace, and mutual respect.

Peace is the backdrop for another intervention in this first MAP, budgeted at around €100,000, which the Palafrugell City Council hopes will expand in the future. Italian artist Tano Pisano, who lived in this municipality for a time, will reopen the Mural de la Pau (Peace Mural ) he created in 2006 in the chapel of the Sant Martí church in Palafrugell. This piece, consisting of a stained-glass window, two bas-reliefs, two ceramic mosaics, and a mixed-media mural, evokes values such as reconciliation and hope. The artist will also showcase the Meccanos exhibition, which was exhibited last summer at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

Álvarez explains that one of the crown jewels of this Palafrugell Art Show is the exhibition that will be held at the Santa Margarida space, featuring a selection of sketches from the prestigious Museo dei Bozzetti in Pietrasanta. The Italian city is known for its artistic tradition in sculpture, thanks to the proximity of the Carrara marble quarries.

The Palafrugell exhibition will feature a selection of works by artists such as Matti Kalevi Auvinen, Alberto Cortina, Heppe de Haan, Niki de Saint Phalle, and Margot Homan, symbolizing the initial stage of the creative process, when the sculpture is merely an idea. As part of this exhibition, Mayor Laura Millán explains that the municipalities of Palafrugell and Pietrasanta will sign a cultural and tourism twinning agreement on July 30th, with the aim of collaborating on cultural exchange.

Palafrugell and its surroundings are home to a large number of artists. Toni Álvarez explains that more than 200 artists live and work within a 50-kilometer radius. Specifically, a group of around fifty artists based in this area of the Empordà region is the focus of another of the exhibitions, "Landscape with Figures ," currently on view in iconic venues around the city. These artists represent a wide variety of disciplines and styles: from the naive art of Cristina Fonollosa (Figueres) to the textile art of Clara Sullà (La Bisbal d'Empordà) to the landscape painting of Berni Ballesta (L'Escala). This collective exhibition aims to showcase the talent found in a small area with exceptional creative density. Among all the local artists, this first MAP dedicates a solo exhibition to the sculptor Tura Sanglas. The mayor of Palafrugell aspires to turn the municipality into a "southern European hub for contemporary art."