Gerard Castellví
Montblanc, 1986
Castellví’s art delves into the quiet connection between humanity and the earth, conveyed through richly textured landscapes, both real and imagined. In a foretaste of what is to come, the artist takes us to secluded hilltops, sometimes barren, other times populated by figures that seem to dissolve into the natural world. Blending tradition with a contemporary sensibility, his swift, expressive brushstrokes invite viewers on an introspective journey, exploring the deepest corners of human consciousness.
Castellví received his Fine Arts training in Barcelona and Florence and is also a professor at the Academy of Art in Barcelona. Throughout his career, he has participated in prestigious artist residencies in Austria and China and has been a finalist in multiple editions of the renowned ‘Figurativas’ competition. His work has been exhibited in Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom, and is included in the collections of the MEAM and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of Sant Jordi.
More about the artist
Walking in solitude is an act of love with oneself.
Walking alone is a form of meditation.
Walking in solitude is observation of oneself.
Walking in solitude is like painting.
We, as painters, are born, grow and die in an intense solitude. A condition imposed and necessary in equal parts. A condition that opens paths for us, twists us, examines us and constantly mistreats us.
A ‘Dialogue with Me’ is a sort of pictorial diary into which Gerard Castellví lets us look out to see his walk through the mountains, real and imagined, unaccompanied. Alone with himself. With his lands and his greens, with his figures that are only so because he shows them to us. Because he imagines them.
Castellví gives us clues and brings us closer to his journey through the formats. The small ones, brief approximations to tangible landscapes in the surroundings of his hometown, only a prelude to what is to come.
As these grow, so does his freedom, he lets himself go, his inner life asserts itself and he shows it to us without fear. Thus, we are suddenly confronted with almost life-size scenes of figures in lost corners of a hill. We do not know what they are doing or why they are there, and perhaps neither does the painter. We might well think of a stark bacchanal of violent bodies. We could well think of an intimate moment of the human being in communion with nature.
It might seem, in the end, that Gerard Castellví does not want to walk alone and invites us to end up his journey with him.
Javier Ruiz
