Exhibition “Virgilio” (Virgili Vallmajó Batlle). The radical aesthetic of a catalan painter anarcho-syndicalist exiled to Toulouse

Monographic exhibition about one of the most important and least known Catalan exiled artists. Born in Olot in 1915, he was completely forgotten after the Spanish Civil War. In his youth, he had worked in the production of religious images, the textile sector and the paper industry. He was involved in trade union activities while participating in diverse cultural, sporting and association initiatives. Following the military uprising against the Republic, he joined the Antifascist Committee of Sant Joan les Fonts, where he worked. He went as a volunteer to the Aragon Front and was later exiled in France. He lived for some time in Montauban and later, after marrying, he settled in Toulouse, a city with a large anarchist group, where he died of tuberculosis in 1946.

Virgili Batlle Vallmajó was a painter who, despite having produced his work amidst poverty, marginality and illness, was decisive in maintaining and renewing the progress of modernity and the avant-gardes during the 1940s. His aesthetic contribution is mainly based on experiences of a cubist background from which he developed a non-figurative painting, highly synthetic and with a strong radical nature. Historically, the work of the artist occupies a pioneering position among the creators born in the Spanish state who cultivated geometric abstraction. His paintings suggest the aspiration to construct an alternative independent reality, in keeping with his utopian and libertarian yearnings.

Based on this exhibition, curated by art historian Narcís Selles, a catalogue will be published. 

Exhibition 15.10.2011 - 22.1.2012