work
The biography of Pilar Perdices tells of a woman who has been painting professionally for more than 50 years. The legacy of his career positions us before the work of a lifetime dedicated to the study and experimentation of art.
The figuration of his first works and exhibitions in the sixties presented the technical quality of the artist. His figurative, however, was already quite ambiguous and expressive, already in the early seventies, coinciding with a time of social and political upheaval. latent in the street, Pilar Perdices migrates towards abstraction.
INFORMALISM VERSUS PILAR PARTRIDGES
From the Informalist school, she takes support and matter as self-referential elements, but her personality pushes her to avoid the "official" current to freely enter other territories.
In search of her own language: where most of them created flat works, Pilar Perdices blurred spaces. Where others stained the works, she used color to create atmospheres. Where the rest of the group offered works without any significance, Pilar Perdices added pictograms and graphs, perhaps not legible, but that hid a deep meaning in each of the works.
In short, her work was so far from the informalist current of the moment that critics had to invent new "labels" for an artist whom Manuel Duran (1977) came to call "subveresiva" since "her" scribbles " They responded to a posture of liberation from the conventions and schemes imposed by the established culture. "
CENTRAL THEME OF HIS WORK
Pilar Perdices searched space, this being the backbone of his work. For her, matter is more of a technical than a conceptual concern, and it is precisely this concept that distances her from the classical informalist school.
The central theme of his work is the landscape, a non-figurative landscape in which, despite the abstract appearance, the natural structure, atmosphere and space are clearly recognized. In any case, however, we cannot disregard her spaces from other types of landscapes, those internal to the artist herself, those that define emotional states, a symbolic expression that also distances her from the informalist current.
His way of expressing, rhythmic and gestural, has been framed within abstract expressionism, and described as spatialist abstraction or subjective naturalism. In truth, but, it is true that the critics have never known in what running to pigeonhole it. On the other hand, it is quite a virtue to become in this way a "rare bird" of the abstraction made to our country.
If we look at the reading of the biography and writings collected from the anthology of texts (signed by Joan Brossa; Daniel Giralt-Miracle; Manuel Duran; Arnau Puig; Ángel Azpeitia; M. Teresa Blanch; A. Fernández Molina; J. Corredor Matheos; Contxita Oliver; Montserrat Sintes; Joan Gil; Claudi Puchades), we will clearly observe how with each new decade Perdices incorporated new supports and formats, evolved in the use of colors, modified the gesture ... in short, it progressed over the years the work being a plastic photograph of their experiential experiences. Her iconography, however, clearly defines her work, since everything and the evolution of the artist, the initial elements intervene in each new stage, but in a different way.
ICONOGRAPHY
The signs (graphical and numerical) are recurring elements in his work, in some way, although they are not illegible words or phrases, they are his way of naming what he cannot say aloud. Converted into lines full of emotion, we will understand if the message is positive or negative due to the delicacy of the lines or the measure of the signs, and thus we will interpret the artist's state of mind.
In his compositions it is common to find "horizons", dividing lines that structure the works and define different parts of the paintings. Visual partitions that evoke a world full of dualities. Between the earthly and the most spiritual expression is one of the artist's favorite "games".
His is a work full of dynamism, partly thanks to the textuality that he achieves with the use of different materials that he incorporates into many of his works such as papers, fabrics, sand ... Without forgetting that he also has the interest to experiment with different supports such as cardboard or packaging to which it grants "new lives" converted into artistic creations, without any of these elements being hidden, a cardboard is a cardboard.
Color is another essential element. Each stage of his life has been starred by a different color palette, all of them significant, where white often has a more tragic rather than calm character.
The titles of Pilar Perdices's works are always referential -and exquisitely poetic- They provide us with clues to approach the work at the moment we decide to accept the implicit challenge that any work by Pilar Perdices proposes to us.
In any case, Pilar Perdices plays with a certain ambiguity between the figurative and the abstraction that allow us to pass through reality and flee towards new imaginary worlds (his or ours) traveling through lines full of emotion, a range of colors nothing strident (although they are sometimes firm, they always tend to serenity), and a rhythmic and harmonious distribution of forms.
THE BEAUTY
It has always been accepted that what is beautiful is a quality of art.
Beyond the distance that Pilar Perdices took from contemporary artists in terms of the significance of her work, Perdices also distinguished herself by understanding "art as beauty at the service of people." Understanding beauty as a capable harmony
to communicate a feeling and / or emotion. (It is recommended at this point to read text 1 of the Anthology of texts).
At a time when beauty is clearly no longer sought and the idea is vindicated over any other aspect of the work -even though the world that deals with ideas is philosophy, not art-, Partridges bet on education and sensitivity.
To break the rules and propose new plastic speeches, you have to know the rules beforehand. This is exactly what Pilar Perdices did when she decided not to settle for a technically well-executed work and dare to travel to new territories. How the Greeks said "beauty is difficult."
The revolution does not happen to do things that people do not understand, the revolution is to get a new proposal that reaches the public. Such has always been the connection between the work of Pilar Perdices and her viewers, insofar as Perdices is capable of drawing an abstraction -because it has all the elements to call it abstraction- turning it into a compositionally balanced space that inspires thought and invites contemplation This is called TALENT.
THE PERSONAL AND SOCIAL COMMITMENT OF PILAR PERDICES
Pilar Perdices defines herself as a woman who PAINTS. He has written and said it repeatedly. Her condition as a woman conditioned her significantly, not because of herself, but because of her gender condition.
Pilar's commitment has always gone through being honest with herself, being faithful to what she thinks and consistency in the work she has done and the way she has defended it.
Nature and the role of women in society are a constant in her work: Subtly, in each of her compositions she has defended Mother Earth, and has vindicated the importance of her preservation. The incorporation of cardboard to represent works in large format (parabens, columns, panels ...) in the eighties made her a defender of recycling. As for the female figure, there is no work where the figure of the woman as mother, as daughter, as companion does not refer in some way.
Pilar Perdices has been a woman artist who has tirelessly painted beyond fashions or commercial commitments. She has made herself, has experimented, trial and error, and has never settled. A conscious and constant evolution that has generated a representative work of the work of a Catalan artist throughout the second half of the s. XX.