BIOGRAPHY

PILAR PERDICES, ARTIST, 50 YEARS OF ARTISTIC CAREER.

Pilar Perdices was born in Maó in 1931. Two years later she left Menorca because her father, a military man, was transferred to Alcalá de Henares and later to Zaragoza, where he lived through the civil war. His adolescence was spent in Barcelona, in the Gracia neighborhood, where he studied drawing and painting for three years at the School of Arts and Crafts (la Llotja). Later, already married and the mother of a daughter, she studied Fine Arts at the University of Barcelona (1962-1967), becoming an exceptional case being a woman and having a family, at a time when the university was mostly male. She was a drawing professor at the INEM of Martorell since 1969. In 1979 she was appointed associate professor of high school, and she became a full-time high school professor in the specialty of drawing in 1982. She obtained the title of Master Craftsman in the mode of engraving on nineteen ninety six.

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THE BEGINNINGS, THE FIGURATION

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Next generational to the founding members of "Dau al set" , their academic training and the beginning of their pictorial career comes when Tàpies, Ponç and Cuixart are already recognized artists. It is related to the Barcelona cultural and artistic movement of the time, perhaps the best in the entire history of Catalan art. She says " that Petritxol street, and the Parara room, set the artistic rhythm and there was always a coming and going of painters and art-loving people" She is one of those who circulates and shares a chat with other artists with whom they talk about Picasso's works, Kafka's books ...

He began to exhibit in 1967 at the Sala Vayreda, and at the Círculo Artístico de San Lucas. Pilar Perdices is part of an academic and classical training, she specializes in figurative portraiture, showing that she has a great command of technique and figure. José Gutiérrez-Solana and William Turner are his first references. The impressionists and the painters of lights do not leave her indifferent. There is no doubt, but, that the relationship it maintains with authors from the Barcelona scene conditions its projection.

Empowerment as an artist came to him in the seventies. At this time  Jordi Costa, director of the Picasso workshop, organized dinners called La Barretina de Xaixa, at the Oriente de la Rambla hotel. They consisted of putting the Barretina on a famous person. Pilar Perdices named Antoni Tàpies, this gesture being a type of alternative for her in the world of Catalan art.

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THE 70'S, THE EVOLUTION OF ABSTRACTION BEYOND INFORMALISM

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In this decade, the seventies, is when something is transformed, and according to herself she says “in 1970 it was a total suspension of pictorial activity and a rush of conscience.” (2) Derived from a personal crisis and undesirable events that changed her life , the artist concentrates on the study of art history and psychology, it is now that her work is reconsidered and, following her instinct in the investigation of the essence, the evolution from figurative to abstract begins.

He begins to blur the figure and simplify the lines reaching the limit of abstraction. Without too many shortcuts, he entered the world of informalism, but began to shy away from the influences of Tàpies to enter new pictorial territories. Partridges differs from its informalist precursors in that it no longer focuses on matter as the only way to conclude the aesthetic process, but instead seeks to create spaces and atmospheres where composition, color, symbolism, and the balance of forms rival each other. achieve the limelight. His works are printed with symbols, pictograms and letters that are difficult to read but not devoid of meaning, perhaps they are a way of expressing what he cannot say out loud. In any case, she is an artist who discards silence, and we can understand if the message of the work is positive or negative due to the gesture, the measure, the line and the delicacy in which they are represented. A universe of pictograms, a constant in all his work, until today.

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Member of the group Signo 76 (3) formed by the painters Albert Casal, Comajú, Costa Salanova, Rey Polo, Pujol Grau and Pilar Perdices, they exhibit at the Palacio de la Virreina in Barcelona. Shortly after, he won the 1st Sant Jordi Drawing Prize.

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Critics value his painting. Fernando Gutierrez (4) highlights his ability to transmit the soul through a landscape based on simple and naive plastic elements, and at the same time, eloquent when it comes to transmitting a mysterious and deep atmosphere.

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For his first exhibition at the Picasso Workshop on Calle de la Plata in Barcelona in 1976, the poet Joan Brossa (5), who regularly visits his workshop, dedicates a beautiful sonnet “Atot” (To everything) and directs him, among others, the following verse "and look inside your labrador" inviting her to find her own plastic path.

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Different critics speak of this exhibition: Manuel Duran (6) focuses on the most formal aspects in search of his plastic identity. Daniel Giralt-Miracles (7) highlights the material informalism, the integration of collage and sign, and the richness of textures. Arnau Puig (8) talks about his gestural, intimate and subjective landscapes that offer us his fears. At the same time, he makes reference to his upcoming stripes Rothko and the collages of Tàpies.

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There is no doubt that Tàpies is his first reference, from him he learns that all the components of the painting are essential, including the support, and that the work is the result of the sum of elements such as sand, different TVs, cardboard. At some point, however, she disassociates herself from the teacher in that she does not conceive the work only as a surface, but for her it is a space that allows her to share a personal and even autobiographical message (sometimes she incorporates notes in pencils of models made when I was studying Fine Arts that represent memories, personal experiences) Essentially looking for a more personal poetics.

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In January 1977 Manuel Duran (9) writes that Perdices's work is “subliminal and subversive” and quotes the same artist “There is no simplicity in my paintings, there is a structure that is not improvised. If there is, it is a simplification. In the paintings there are no things that could be there, but that are not necessary ”. In this way, he manifests that his work is the result of learning and artistic and introspective research.

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Ángel Azpeitia (10) refers to the work of Perdices, highlighting the non-recognizable graphic elements and the character of his gesture. He defines Pilar's painting as "abstract landscapes", spaces defined from the use of color, and the importance of matter given the use of collage.

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From 1977 he began to have difficulties to exhibit in certain galleries and the silence of the official criticism of his work fell. Even so, Pilar Perdices remains true to herself and to her ideals, and is committed to her condition as a woman artist, and to the social and political context in which she lives. Among other actions, he donated an oil painting to the Avui newspaper in homage to Salvador Puig Antich. A completely black oil with small white crosses in the foreground that is part of a series of three paintings with this theme. This is how she justifies her active social participation through painting “it is already a policy in itself (she refers to the act of painting) an artist because of the fact that he is one is a romantic anarchist, he denounces injustices on a human, intimate level. Man is everything, the earth is our mother, we have to live with dignity and respect ” (12)

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He continues to receive good reviews from voices such as M. Teresa Blanch (13) who recognizes him, between 1978 and 1979, having entered a promising avenue of plastic research. Joan Junyer (14) highlights the subtility of the gestural, subjective and personal informalism of Pilar Perdices.

Excluded from the group "the galaxy of the chosen ones" defined by Valeriano Bozal in the work Art of the 20th century in Spain, where she considers classic artists such as Antoni Tàpias, Josep Guinovart, Joan Hernández Pijuan, all of them members of Dado al Set, she does not feel recognized as a woman or as an artist. However, the support of the artists Albert Ràfols Casamada and Maria Girona i Benet was of great help because once again the expression of the work of Pilar Perdices was valued. From the second half of the eighties, Pilar Perdices regained a prominent position among Informalist artists.

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THE 80'S, EXPRESSIONISM AND COLOR

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With the new decade, in the eighties, moving away from the influences of Tàpies, he found new references for his work, the same Ràfols Casamada and above all he got closer to the North American abstract expressionists, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock. With Rothko he falls in love with what he wants to be so much plan, the color, he really breathes "something" that goes beyond the stain.

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Throughout the decade he participated in different exhibitions: at the AB Gallery in Granollers (1980); II Ibero-American Art Biennial (1980); Arch 82 (Batik Stand); Collective of plastic artists "Por la Pau y el Desarme" (1984); to Arco 86 (Tertre Gallery); 4th International Art Fair of Modern and Contemporary Art of Valencia Interarte with the Lleonart gallery (1988)

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In 1985 the critic Fernández Molina called the new pictorial stage of Perdices as a "spatialist expressionism" defined by compositions motivated by horizontal bands. It is in this context that she began to paint large formats with recycled cardboard, making the first screens and columns, called by her "paper prisons", which, unlike real prisons, are an expression of personal isolation where one Only one can enter and only one, if you want, you can leave.

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The same year the Generalitat of Catalonia granted her a grant for plastic research with which she developed new works and consolidate her plastic language as a draftsman, painter and printmaker.

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However, she was aware that her work did not follow plastic fashion, apart from commercial trends, she followed her instinct “No, I don't paint what is worn. My painting does not follow the fashions; that's why there are already the couturiers ” ( 15) She surely took the advice of her friend Joan Brossa, defended being herself and finding her own artistic discourse.

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DECADE OF  90, CONTINUES IN THE SEARCH FOR YOUR OWN PLASTIC LANGUAGE
 

The nineties opened with a review by Corredor Matheos for an exhibition at the Tertre Gallery (16) “The sensation that the work of Pilar Perdices has always produced (...) is one of recollection and sensitivity. All stridency is avoided. The rhythms are calm, harmonic. The impression of the whole is, at once, a single one. Nothing distracts us in this smooth and continuous flow of pure painting, in which space, sign, matter and color vibrate in unison "

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At this stage he incorporates his books on paper, which he combs and writes, and which he presents as open books that invites us to look at and read them, since he again addresses atmospheres while incorporating his characteristic pictograms and signs.

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In 1993 she won the Donart 93 prize, organized by the Independent Association of Women of Catalonia. An award that values artistic creation made by women. That year a tribute to Remedios Varo was proposed. On the occasion of this award, it was Josep Maria Cadena (17) who referred to his particular pictorial language based on graphics and colors, his combination of figuration and abstraction, and together with the broad and safe career of the artist.

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During these years he devoted himself intensely to engraving (etching and lithography) and actively participated in the actions of the AAIP FAD engraving group, among others they paid homage to Joan Miró in 1995. With this action they recognize the teacher, with the words of Giralt-Miracle  "In art there are no objects or subjects, only experiences" (18) As Pilar Perdices also understands art and demonstrates it through her work.

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Architectural elements are recurring elements in his work during these years, although it was not the first time that arches and turns were motifs in his works. "Architecture of the mind", elements that invite the viewer to go through more mental than physical doors. The works of this stage have to be related to the cardboard columns, the previously referenced paper prisons.

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THE NEW CENTURY, time of different anthologies

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In 2001 a grand anthology was held in the Pia Almoina (Barcelona). Conchita Oliver (19), as curator of the exhibition, proposes a historical journey of the trajectory of Pilar Perdices and defines her work as “intimate projections of interior states”.

An artist already recognized, as expressed by Ramon Casalé (20) when he reviews his career linked to informalism in the representation of non-form, a reference to abstraction, without forgetting his  personal iconographic universe.

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It is also Ramon Casalé (21) who recognizes Pilar Perdices “a new way of understanding avant-garde painting from the media of s. XX until today ”that starts from the“ informalist trend ”as a link“ with the most committed avant-garde art, both on the social and political levels of the time ”.

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In 2005, she won the Ynglada-Guillot XLIII Edition Prize for Drawing, the Joan Ramon Masoliver National Prize for Painting and was selected in the III Torroella de Montgrí Prize for Contemporary Painting (Palau Solterra) organized by the Vila Casas Foundation.

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This same year Marta Feli dedicates a note to her in the magazine Bonart (22) where she reviews 40 years of the artist's work dedicated to research and experimentation that have allowed her to develop a personal creative work, both the technique and the motives, capable of communicate to the viewer their particular way of understanding the environment. It is Joan Gil (23) who in 2007 invites you to enjoy the work of this artist and whose “firm and forceful career” stands out.

In 2008, with a consolidated career away from her island, Pilar Perdices was discovered online by MA Limón (24), journalist and member of the Ateneo de Maó. Find an artist on the web that you had no knowledge of. Obviously he is struck by the fact that it is Menorcan. He began an “epistolary” relationship until he made the work of Partridges known to Josep Bagur, a member of the Athenaeum's Fine Arts, who was in charge of doing a biographical and pictorial research work with the collaboration of Antoni Miquel Pons Carreras. It was the trigger for a great exhibition called "Things Happen" that was held in 2009 and which brought Pilar Perdices's paintings to the Cloister of Carme (Maó) and in the El Rosal room (Ciutadella); and his engravings in the Ateneo room (Maó). The exhibition was organized by the Insular Council of Menorca and the Scientific Literary and Artistic Athenaeum of Maó.
 

2014 was the year of his anthology at the Florencio de la Fuente Contemporary Art Museum, in the city of Requena, curated by Joan Gil. In recent years, Pilar Perdices has exhibited her work at the Artemisia, Arte & Tendències gallery, where the most important collection of her work can be found.

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CLOSING OF THE CIRCLE, AN ACTIVE WOMAN ARTIST

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Pilar Perdices has always been an anarchic artist, taking what most inspired her from artists, techniques and trends, to transcend and filter them through her own gaze and her talent. In this way, he skips all the rules of abstract art: if he uses the resources of abstraction, but at the same time creates personal internal, existential, subjective, expressive and gestural landscapes. How she herself says “What I do is an abstraction (…) certain spaces, you could put yourself inside the painting, something very poetic and beautiful. I believe that the work has to make you dream, there must be a kind of dialogue between you and it and it has to help you get away from everyday life. For all this I make these imaginary spaces where I like that people can get lost ”.

Formed in the sixties, with other female voices such as Concha Ibáñez, Cecília Vidal, Engràcia Casas, among oas, all of them female artists who have been able to defend a personal work in a very complicated moment for the mere fact of being women .

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GRADES:

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1 P. Partridges (personal communication, April 2021)
2 Pons, MA (2008) Pilar Perdices. Passen coses, p 16
3 Signe 76. Palau de la Virreina from November 20 to December 8, 1975.
4 Gutierrez, F. (1976) “Pilar Perdices in Art-Inver. ART AND ARTISTS ”. The Spanish Vanguard
5 Brossa, J. Pilar Perdices Sintes. Exhibition d'olis i drawings. Picasso workshop, Barcelona. From November 30 to December 24, 1976.
6 Duran, M. (1976) Pilar Perdices (Picasso Workshop) Don Pablo, no 7. Rama Editoral, SA. Madrid.
7 Giralr-Miracle, D. (1976) Pilar Perdices Sintes. Avui.
8 Puig, A. (1977) Pilar Perdices in Picasso's workshop. Plastic arts, no. 14.
9 Duran, M. (1977) Pilar Perdices, the subversion. World.
10 Azpeitia, Á. (1978) Athens Gallery: Pilar Partridges. Herald of Aragon.
12 Pons, MA (2008) Pilar Partridges. Passen coses, p 20
13 Blanch, MT (1979) Pilar Partridges, habitat for a writing. Batik. no. 50, p. 117
14 Junyer, J. (1980) Plastic arts. Catalonia Special, no. 41-42, p. 56
15 Lara Coira, J. “Last cerimònies”. Cited work.
16 Corredor Matheos, J. "The painting of Pilar Perdices: space, sign, matter." Galeria Tertre, Mataró, 1991.
17 Cadena, JM Perdices, Donart 93 Award. The world of dreams. The Elizalde House.
18 Giralt-Miracle, D. (1995) Mont-Roig i Miró, a plastic vision through gravat. AAIP FAD. Mont-roig del Camp Town Hall, Esdamientos Vella.
19 Oliver, C. (2001) The Signic Gestuality of Pilar Perdices. Barcelona.
20 Casalé, R. (2002) Pilar Perdices. Consistency as a creative paradigm. Zerovuitresquarantazero, pp. 21 - 22.
21 Casalé, R. (2005) Barcelona-Madrid-Barcelona. Anar i tornar. Terrassa: Fundació Caixa Terrassa cultural center.
22 Feliu, M. (2005) Pilar Perdices. Bonart, no. 72.
23 Gil, J. (2007) Joan Rafa Sant Just Desvern Gallery, Barcelona.
24 Limón, MA (2008, March 31) The painter that Internet was Menorcan. Diari de Balears digital.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Artemisia, Art & Tendències (Editor) (2013) Guided visit to "Diàlegs amb la natura" with Pilar Perdices [youtube video]. Les Franqueses del Vallès, Bcn.
• Limón, MA (2008, March 31) "The painter that Internet was Menorcan." Diari de Balears digital.
Retrieved from https://www.dbalears.cat/opinio/2008/03/31/224754/la-pintora-que-internet-feumenorquina.html
• Menorca recovers Pilar Perdices. (2009) Àmbit Magazine of culture, pp. 8-9-10.
• Oliver, C. (2001) The Signic Gestuality of Pilar Perdices. Barcelona. Generalitat of Catalunya. Department of Culture.
• Pons, MA (2008) Pilar Perdices. Passen coses. Minorca. Insular Council of Menorca. Department of Culture, Heritage, Education and Youth.
• Pons, MA (2016) Pilar Perdices. Work donated to the town of Menorca. Minorca. Ajuntament de Maó.
• P. Perdices (personal communication, April 2021)

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