Inauguration of Baqués (November 16th 2012)

Ignasi Cabanas, director of the Rusiñol Gallery, is the first one to mediate in the presentation of Josep Baqués’ exhibition “The power of image and colour”. He explains to the assistants that Baqués is one of the artists constituting the select group of painters collected in the book of the 25 years of the Rusiñol Gallery. Mr. Cabanas also highlights the particularities of Baques’ work as well as the plentiful fans who always attend his “vernissages” whenever he presents a new collection.

Josep M.Cadena begins his significant remarks alluding to Francesco Petrarca and to the figure of Laura which serve him to create a parallelism with the female figures appearing in many of Baques’ works in this exhibition. These female figures are especially graceful and have an internal rhythm that makes all things surrounding them to look motionless. They are archetypes; they do not represent someone specific but they are rather like an idea remaining with us, such as when we are dreaming.

Baqués works with imagination. At the beginning, he had the need to demonstrate that he knew how to accurately portray what he had around him but, at a given moment, his feelings were manifested through colour, shape and action. Texture, colour and shapes are elements he uses to establish a pleasant dialogue between his work and the onlooker which, in turn, allows us to enter a surreal world with a figurative base.

“In the universe there are two very important elements for me: the horse, in the irrational world, and the female figure, in the rational one. Both are perfect elements and this is why they are the central characters in my works. However, there are also other facets like birds, fruits… that help me to configure the work, to enhance his paintings”..

“There is a lot of unconsciousness in my work. I am aware that there are things that have captivated me and that are reflected in my paintings, but a posteriori, in an unconscious way. By way of example, I want to explain that on a trip to Tokyo, while I walked through a park, I discovered on the ground a few yellow leaves that enthralled me. They were the leaves of the Ginkgo Biloba tree, leaves that later on have been reflected in my work. Everything is the fruit of seeing more rather than looking at, and make yours what nature is offering you. Everything is valid to make art provided the final effect be optimal”.