Banyar-se agua freda de sequia, play al paller y cobrir-se de tiges seques, pujar als arbres y gronxar-se de les coppers… Nature is present in the infant of Fina Miralles Nobell (Sabadell, 1950), daughter of a metge and a woman who brought the six lands of her own. “My family came from Mars. They were democrats, people with a brilliant spirit in post-war Spain. They will have all kinds,” he explains from the hospital in Figueres. Four months ago she was hospitalized due to an illness that had lasted for decades. “But this time, this time, I’m going home.” El to de veu, ferm i dolç, subscribes to the six paraules. “Colleagues will always give their support in everything. They will accept and respect as it was. I’m not that different! We have great strength, we are very independent and we have some ulls that we see,” says Riallera. So it won’t surprise anyone at home that you become an artist. On the contrary, the ciao encoratjar. But in the early seventies, after earning a degree in Fine Arts in Barcelona, Miralles did not want to stay in a workshop and devote himself to painting. I wanted to experiment. “She was a dona brought to the land and faced ho soc,” he says.
Miralles will focus his practice on exploring the relationship between nature, materials and things, transforming the soul into an artistic artefact. “I remember there was a forat on the ground and I was about to plant a dins, buried at the end of the Genolls. Then I asked who the photographer was. Who was the photographer? If you go see the meu cunyat Francesc!”, he exclaims of the iconic images of the donut tree. It was part of this action that goes to Sant Llorenç del Munt Translations (1973), where he tries to transfer natural elements from his habitat, as he will find the grass sculpted in Sabadell on a beach in Premià de Mar. It will arrive later Relations (1975), another series of images on his cos es cobria de pedres, terra, palla… “Tot era very senzill i això és fantàstic. lectures. In my case, the artistic practice did not follow a profession, nor a vocation, nor a devotion. It followed a way of life that revealed enormous interior dimensions”, he assures. Miralles confesses that at that time he did not know what conceptual art was. Nor that she was a feminist.
When we review Catalan art of any era, we run the risk of fer-ho from a current point of view. “Fina Miralles and other artists of the new generation see them as feminists, as pioneers, but they don’t think so, perhaps because they too have no contact with the feminist political environment of the time”, says Lluïsa Faxedas, a doctor in Art History. “I don’t know if we are feminists, we are gifts that we will decide to be enlightened thinkers. We will not get married, we will not have children, we will not follow the model of a reproductive woman and a caregiver because having one’s own family implies giving up”, says Miralles, who will be the co-ethnic of Eulàlia Grau and Eugènia Balcells. Pause, reflect and continue: “It is also certain that feminism is theair of the timethe 21st century is the century of gifts, tot arreu. It’s just that we can’t continue with this world that is slumming on earth, that wages wars and only seeks power and money. It will be very difficult, but I believe the day will come when the majority of people will say prou.”
I deix bourgeois culture and embrace indigenous culture. The Anima mundi, the Terra màter, the creative and protective Pachamama
With these words Miralles summarizes the journey that he will undertake in 1983 and which will last five months through South America. “Life will change. I will mourn what I had not explored before. I will appreciate the fact that I was human, that I was like everyone else, that the role of an interesting artist was over. Nature will teach me everything,” he reveals. Having returned to Europe, he lived in France and in 1999 he settled in Cadaqués, in a period of self-exile, among the official artistic circuits that aroused the greatest interest. According to Faxedas, intercontinental travel will also transform artistic practice. “He will begin to paint, the tracing on the white, the intuitive gesture… Here the next conceptual phase will begin.” Així ho corroborates the artist’s mateixa: “I would transmit the feelings with a paper and a pencil. Fer paints live. Em vaig poser at the disposal of the dictat of the forms and paraules, in a force that would be the universal unconscious of all times and of all cultures. My name is what vulgueu, il vaig dir! Jo només he estat un transmitter.”
The artist is the medium, he must leave all channels clear, open. You have to be patient and let the work continue to be influenced by the forces around it.
If one thing differentiates Miralles from other creative gifts of the new generation – with the exception of some with Sílvia Gubern and Mari Chordà – it is that he published textual works. “They are breus reflections, poetic texts… Everything you say is apparently simple, but in reality it is very complex,” says Faxedas, who quotes Fertile paraulae (1972-2017), four volumes edited by the art historian Maia Creus, exhibited as the paraula has run through all of Miralles’ work. “The paraulas are strong, they move people’s feelings and lives,” said the artist. This is also the effect that will be sought in the forms of the new pictorial work. “Its waters appear, the spirits of the trees and flowers… People see them because they are more spiritual works, with a deeper and more symbolic meaning,” explains Faxedas, who together with Creus will curate the exhibition in 2023. From beyond temperatures to the Vila Casas Foundation. “We will exhibit the drawings that Fina brings to the world. At that moment things will disappear because this more spiritual dimension is not interesting. But since the last decade or fifteen years, with the rescue of figures like Hilma af Klint or the Catalan Josefa Tolrà, she too has changed. Ara The art world is more receptive. It is very important that young people ask themselves questions about the spiritual sense, about the idea of discovering humanitarian and solidarity values in a world of the cult of jo, jo, jo and només jo think that Rosalía’s new album will live here,” says Faxedas.
The aigua. The character. The mare. He understood fertility
In the Miralles universe, water has always been very present, both in the conceptual and pictorial phase, which will be donated to the quadres series in 1996. Memorialon the play with light and the idea of the union of the diví with the human. “Today water is not just a resource, it has also become a geopolitical problem,” says Montse Badia, commissioner of the Water mapsa collective exhibition inaugurated by the Fundació Úniques of Barcelona, which addresses water as a device of perception, as a historical trace, as a genealogy of the thing and as an eine of resistance. “I included it at the expense of young artists such as Anna Dot, Caterina Miralles Tagliabue and Stella Rahola, who work on water problems from different perspectives. Fina has always seen the world as a system of which everyone is part and therefore we can understand it starting from extractivism”, he assures. Miralles exhibits two works: The return (2011), a photographic documentation that is linked to a work of aquatic themes from its beginnings, the Sea, sky and earth (1973), a collage of photographs and paraules.
In addition to Barcelona, Miralles’ job also comes into playArts of the Earthan exhibition curated by Manuel Cirauqui which will open at the beginning of December at the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and which proposes a rereading of the nature-oriented art of the darrer mig segle. “Fina’s work is present in collectives all over the world, but above all that of others, it addresses more if we talk about environmentalism and feminism,” underlines Faxedas. In fact, they are the two concepts that will highlight the jury that will award the 2025 National Plastic Arts Prize for a month, with Imma Prieto, director of the Tàpies Museum. “The decision will be unanimous. Miralles is a pioneering artist when it comes to relating the individual to nature, being able to deviate from the limits or boundaries of individuality to transcend the concept of the collective that is part of nature, which did not exist in isolation,” says Prieto, who also highlights Miralles’ profound thinking in the light of nature. relationship that the human being is stable in the environment.
“He is happy with this recognition, and a lot of it. But it is not the best job. It is everyone’s job”, underlines Miralles. It’s not a metaphor. At the end of the year, Miralles will distribute his arrival between the Fundació Ars, the Museum of Sabadell — d’on Badia recovered the two works exhibited at the Fundació Úniques — and the Macba, which he will dedicate in 2020 Soc bags I followeda retrospective with an eloquent title that will mark a turning point in the resumption of this career. “My work goes by itself. If you do it for me, it’s everywhere. I haven’t followed a professional artist, but I’m more interested in it. I’m a person who has led an austere life and I’ve seen a lot of things, like a Franciscan. For me, the relationship with nature nourishes me, this is what I do most, what excites me the most.” I’m just thinking about going back to Cadaqués, seeing that sun shining on the sea wall and wandering around among the other people. “One day the villagers will say that Deu is life. I will say no to them, that it is exactly the opposite: that life is Deu and that Deu is nature. Sols la mort, because dins meu hi I bring nature.
