Francesc d’A. Galí. The Invisible Master
Francesc d’Assís Galí i Fabra (Barcelona, 1880-1965) was one of the most prominent figures of Catalan art during the early 20th century. Formed with Pompeu Fabra, he revolutionized Catalan artistic education during the noucentista movement. He trained an entire generation of artists from his Escola d’Art Galí –where his students included Joan Miró and Llorens Artigas– and the Escola Superior dels Bells Oficis related to the Mancomunitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government). Galí also had a fruitful artistic career as a painter, sketcher, muralist, poster artist and illustrator. Trained by Santiago Rusiñol and Alexandre de Riquer, his work spanned the whole spectrum of Catalan modernity: modernisme, symbolism, noucentisme, and the avant-garde. He was the author of noteworthy pieces like the fresco decorating the dome of the Palau Nacional or the posters of the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. In spite of his merits, however, Galí tried to remain invisible. He worked in the shadow of his disciples, downplaying his own artistic abilities and neglecting his legacy; the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War drove him further into oblivion. This exhibit seeks to reveal the footprint of a man who sought to leave no trace.
[Àmbit 1] A Painter from Els Quatre Gats
Galí was raised in a privileged intellectual environment. His father was a professor of rhetoric at the University of Barcelona, and his uncle –who he lived with until the age of twenty– was Pompeu Fabra. Pompeu played a key role in Galí’s intellectual and artistic training, and introduced him to the artistic circle of Els Quatre Gats. There, he became friends with Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas; they clearly influenced Galí’s early works, which exhibit the group’s characteristic expressive and social realism. At the age of fifteen Galí enrolled in Llotja, in the same year as Pablo Picasso. Then, in 1899, he enrolled in the academy of painter and decorator Claudi Hoyos, which would allow him entry into the Sant Lluc artistic circle.
[Àmbit 2] The Symbolist Movement
At the turn of the century, Galí’s work underwent a transformation towards a clear symbolism with gothic elements, mythical figures and landscapes, and religious themes. Alexandre de Riquer played a key role in this transformation, mentoring Galí from a studio he had opened not far from Galí’s new workshop behind the apse of the Cathedral of Barcelona, which he shared with musician Joan Llongueres and writer Manuel de Montoliu. De Riquer founded a brotherhood where young artists –Ricard Opisso, Eugeni D’Ors, Josep Triadó– could learn the Pre-Raphaelite ideas the painter had imported from London: devotion towards applied arts, beauty, patriotism, work, music, love and nature. These values laid the foundation for the noucentista ideology that was about to emerge.
[Àmbit 3] The Educator of an Entire Era
Galí was one of the leading educators of Catalan artistic modernity. He first taught at his own Escola d’Art (1902-1915); then, until 1923, he directed the Escola Superior dels Bells Oficis of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya. Many of the most important Catalan artists of the interwar period were students of his, from the maintainers of noucentisme (Josep Aragay, Rafael Solanich, Francesc Vayreda, Manuel Humbert, Rafel Benet, Jaume Mercadé) to representatives of the avant-garde like Joan Miró, Llorens Artigas or E.C. Ricart. Galí based his curriculum on students’ intellectual and sensory development: they read the classics, listened to music, went on trips across Catalonia –especially to the Montseny Mountains– and visited avant-garde art exhibitions at Sala Dalmau. He exposed his students to decorative arts, invented advanced teaching techniques to foster artistic individuality, and connected them with the cultural identity of his day.
[Subàmbit 3.1] The Escola d’Art Galí and Noucentista imagery
Located on Cucurulla street, in Barcelona, the Escola d’Art Galí became the most important art school promoting Noucentista principles. Students read Eugeni d’Ors’ Glosari, the Latin classics and the biographies of Renaissance artists. They did research into forms and techniques from Catalonia’s artistic past, especially the Baroque period (traditional ceramics, work with precious metals, boxwood engraving). Special attention was paid to the creation of cultural or national symbols that contrasted with the scholarly hermeticism of the symbolists or the individualism of Modernista painters. As Alexandre Cirici Pellicer recalled, “The Escola d’Art Galí brought into circulation an idea of a Mediterranean Catalonia that was a bit Greek, very Florentine, and strongly rural and maritime. The main theme was based on country girls and lads with pitchers and agave plants, swallows and baskets of fruit, sailboats and bell towers, a baroqueness that became increasingly well-defined and gracile, with a delightful mannerism that was straightforward and full of vitality.”
[Subàmbit 3.2] Miró and the Tactile Exercises
On various occasions, Joan Miró acknowledged the importance of the tactile exercises practised at the Escola d’Art Galí, which he attended from 1912 to 1915. As can be seen in eighteen drawings the artist donated to his foundation, the exercise consisted of blindfolded students touching different objects (a potato, an apple, a face, a stone) and attempting to understand their inner forms. Miró recalled this as a method Galí had invented for him, since he was “incapable of seeing volume”. “If you want to make sense of shapes, there’s no better way than to develop an intuitive memory of them.” Miró also acknowledged that these exercises were the origin of his sense of volume and his interest in sculpture.
[Subàmbit 3.3] Mental Landscapes
Many of Galí’s disciples –Josep Llorens Artigas, Rafael Benet, Joan Bergós, Joan Miró– recalled the landscape exercises he organized on field trips to the Montseny Mountains. Without tools and only “armed with a crown of eyes on our heads”, students were to capture a mental idea of the essence of their surroundings. Another technique involved painting or drawing nature in masses, focusing more on the “in-lines” than the outlines, discovering the organic order of shapes through trial and error. Good suggestions were better than an incorrect conclusion. This method was praised by Gaudí and embraced by the young Miró, whose early landscapes revealed a search for balance between the inner form of nature and the “mysterious force” that, as he admitted to Artigas, he was drawn to.
[Subàmbit 3.4] The Escola Superior dels Bells Oficis
In September 1915, Galí was appointed director of the Escola Superior dels Bells Oficis (ESBO): a school created by the Mancomunitat de Catalunya to train the directors of the country’s artistic workshops. There, Galí applied his educational system, using crafts (ceramics, gardening, woodworking and textiles) and hiring prominent professors, many of whom were educated on the Escola d’Art Galí: Josep Aragay (Ceramics), Joan Bergós/Antoni Puig Gairalt (Construction), Tomàs Aymat (Textile Arts), Esteve Monegal/Pau Gargallo (Sculpture), Ramon Sunyer/Jaume Mercadé (Jewellery), Joan Mirambell/Nicolau Rubió i Tudurí (Gardening), Lluís Bracons (Lacquerwork), Feliu Elias and Joaquim Folch i Torres (History of Art). Galí taught Drawing and Colour and organized field trips to the Montseny Mountains and the Palau de la Música. Among the more than 500 students of the ESBO and the Escola Tècnica d’Oficis d’Arts –created later on to train skilled workers– were artists like Josep Maria Gol, Marià Espinal, Francesc Domingo or Llorens Artigas (who served as its secretary). The school planted the seed for a new golden age of decorative arts in Catalonia, but was closed with the rise of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, as a result of the so-called “Dwelshauvers Affair”.
[Àmbit 4] Galí the Poster Artist
Driven by his ideal of social communication through the arts, Galí also excelled as a poster artist. He created posters throughout his career; however, he was especially productive during the interwar period, when he was tasked with announcing important exhibitions and contests. His style included elements typical of Noucentisme –ships, goddesses, swallows, and Mediterranean plants– which he would increasingly combine with avant-garde techniques (synthesis of volumes, colours and shapes). The poster exhibition at Sala Dalmau, prefaced by Llorens Artigas, and famous posters like the announcement of the 1929 International Exhibition or the Pau Casals Orchestra cemented Galí’s role as one of the foremost poster artists of his day.
[Àmbit 5] The Mediterraneanist Painter
After the closure of the Escola Superior dels Bells Oficis, Galí went back to his work as a painter: he held two exhibitions at Sala Parés (in 1933 and 1935), once again participated in the Autumn Exhibition and Spring Exhibition, and took part in two editions of the prestigious annual exhibition at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. Galí applied himself to pieces that were clearly evocative of the Mediterranean: idealized scenes with female figures in maritime contexts. He also created still lifes, landscapes and genre scenes. Finally, Galí received commissions for several murals, like one in the apse of the Old Cathedral of Lleida by Joan Bergós, one in the music room of Ramon Puig Gairalt’s residence, and one in the Barcelona Central Post Office building by Josep Goday.
[Frase passadís]
“What better for the young men of our day than a man like this: a man who put his disciples in contact with the world around them and sought within their spirits the strength that would awaken the art of our day?” – Josep Aragay, Vell i Nou, 15/05/1915.
[Àmbit 6] The 1929 International Exhibition
Galí was one of the artists most heavily involved in the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition. At the request of general commissioner Lluís Plandiura, he created three posters promoting the exhibition, built a diorama for the exhibit Art in Spain, and designed The Folding Screen of the Creation with Ramon Sarsanedas for the Pavilion of United Artists. He was also the author of a large fresco adorning the dome of the Palau Nacional, which used 35 allegorical figures to represent Spanish culture in the areas of fine arts, science, religion and nature. To create this piece, Galí spent more than six months on precarious scaffolding more than thirty metres tall –an experience that would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. Galí was at the height of his artistic career, both in terms of the quality of his work and his recognition from a society that continued to see him as a master and a referential figure.
[Espai Ithell Colquhoun]
In 1939, Galí was forced into exile and headed for London. There, he maintained an intense romantic relationship with surrealist painter Ithell Colquhoun. That experience would forever change the course of Galí’s art.
