ROOMS 1 & 2
JAUME XIFRA
— MAN -NATURE -REALITY
“Xifra’s artworks are enigmas or reflections of a conflictive, incomprehensible and unjust society that he does not want to stop bearing witness to.”
Maria Lluïsa Borràs
Throughout this exhibition—Man-Nature-Reality—we will reveal a Jaume Xifra whose spirit is playful, poetic and provocative. Born in Salt in 1934, he passed away in Paris in 2014, and throughout his life became a figure who was very critical of consumer society, power structures and dictatorships, and was able to express this nonconformity in an exceptional way through the artistic and pedagogical fields.
Those who knew him emphasised his open nature, his curiosity and his inexhaustible inquisitiveness. It is not surprising, then, that he was the first artist of the Catalan conceptual generation of the sixties to emigrate to France in the midst of the dictatorship (in 1959), after having completed his studies in technology.
Following Xifra’s death, his brothers presented the City Council of Salt with more than 200 of his artworks, which motivated the Man-Nature-Reality exhibition in the Casa de Cultura Les Bernades, in Salt, in 2018. That exhibition sees its continuity in the one we present today in the Espais Volart, part of the Fundació Vila Casas, and which marks the artist’s first retrospective in Barcelona.
Xifra’s work is part of such outstanding collections as those housed by the MACBA, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Fundació Suñol and the Fundació Rafael Tous d’Art Contemporani. A level of recognition and acknowledgement that responds to an intense creative, vital and pedagogical career.
At the beginning of the sixties his experiences were still very diverse: he was a turner in a mechanical workshop in Marseille, embarked on a merchant ship that took him around the world, immersed himself in his academic training in Aix-en-Provence, was the assistant to sculptors Apel·les Fenosa and César, and also studied film. Finally, in 1968 he left for Chile, where he discovered the country’s popular culture, as well as that of others in Latin America.
In 1974 he was appointed professor at the École nationale de Beaux Arts de Dijon, where he taught until the mid-eighties, and later at the École nationale supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy Pontoise, in Cergy-Pontoise. He obtained French nationality on 12 July 1987.
The exhibition is presented across eight different areas that gather works made between the 1960s and 2014.
1.The stroke of the informal. 1960-1964. Paint, gesture and matter. To scribble and scrape. During this period he is influenced by abstraction, especially by the work of Lucio Fontana.
2.Criticism of consumer society. 1965-1966. The artist experiments with paintings made using spray paint on vinyl and with the pochoir stencil technique. The aim is to leave the trace of the objects on the paper, as a denunciation of consumer society.
3.The critical object. 1967-1968. He expresses his discomfort regarding dictatorships and in addition incites a critical reflection on art.
4.The ritual object. Reliquaries and numinous objects. 1969-1971. Upon his return to Paris after his stay in Latin America, he delves into the ritual object. During this period, certain artists reclaim a return to the primitive and to rituals as a recovery of the origins of humanity.
5.Ceremonials and ritual actions. During this decade, Xifra collaborates with the group of Catalan artists in Paris made up of Antoni Miralda, Joan Rabascall and Benet Rossell performing ceremonial actions. Colour and objects acquire a great symbolic presence.
6.Impossible and irreversible objects. The artist transfers the ritual spirit to objects that have to do with an action and turns them into impossible and irreversible realities.
7.The painting machine. Scanning. Xifra creates a technological system for painting people in which the participation of spectators is vital.
8.Film. Jaume Xifra’s creative training and practice broadened due to his connection with cinema, which led him to make films in collaboration with Benet Rossell.