Marina amb figures

Joan Barjau

01/07/04. (Sala 224)

Altarpiece of uses and customs of our time.

Interpretation of a photograph by Mariano Cebolla published in La Vanguardia in August 2002.

This work starts from the sensations received when seeing a photograph, a variegated image of a lively and tingling texture. People on the beach.

The interest in recreating these sensations led me to a more and more detailed contemplation of this image and the need to try to understand it. The process of interpretation made me approach and continue drawing each of the people that make up this scattered plot. The altarpiece took on dimensions (10,3 x 3 m.) that reminded me throughout the process of great paintings of battles and epic deeds.

The anonymous bather who appears alone is a small tribute to a boating friend who died while I was painting the picture.

It cannot be said that I have reached any conclusion about our customs and habits, but this experience has taught me many other things through the craft of painting.

Joan Barjau

Barcelona, 1950

Always related to the world of visual communication, I have worked as a graphic designer in the broadest sense, as a professor of drawing and typography at the Eina school -where I was a student- and I am part of the typographic group Typo-0-Tones. The first time I exhibited at La Sala Vinçon was with Marcel Vergés in 1975.

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