Tarragona opens an art room
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The La Catedral Art Gallery, located in the Upper Town of Tarragona, is a new privately managed exhibition center that was born with the desire to become a cultural center for the city.
Interview with Mr. Enric Batalla, director and curator of the La Catedral Art Gallery.
by Cristina Serret (MAS TARRAGONA).
All my life I have been an art fan and, at this stage I am in now, I have wanted to do something related to culture for the city of Tarragona. This is how Enric Batalla, from Tarragona, introduces himself, director and promoter of the new La Catedral Gallery, which opened its doors this December. An engineer by profession, Enric confesses to being passionate about art, an interest that has led him to also become a collector.
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His new project is a gallery born with the purpose of being a showcase for both established and new artists. There will also be tributes and anthological exhibitions, as well as exhibitions of alternative and experimental art, videos, short films and photography. In addition, La Catedral also wants to offer its space to children, making it easier for them to hold collective exhibitions. In short, Enric details, "the idea is to generate a good cultural and pictorial environment in the city, so that people who love art can come freely."
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The La Catedral Gallery is located in a unique space in the Part Alta, at number 7 Calle del Claustro, and number 5 Pla de La Seu, it has two rooms. The central room houses, at that time, a temporary exhibition of Catalan painters that form part of the gallery's collection. In the second room is what Enric has called The Showcase of Emotions, a multipurpose area where the public can live a sensory experience through the projection of pictorial works accompanied by light, sound and aroma effects.
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Enric Batalla is already working towards the official opening of the space, which will take place this quarter, and which will have as its inaugural exhibition a tribute to contemporary Tarragona painters.
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Later, established and emerging artists will alternate, who will be chosen by an Artistic Committee. At this point, Enric emphasizes that the emerging concept should not necessarily be linked to youth, ensuring that the Gallery is also open to veterans who have discovered their talent in adulthood.
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All of this, explains the gallery owner, presented "more as a cultural work than as a business", ensuring that he is fully aware that "the world of art is difficult", but also that his desire is to "generate a friendly environment for the people who love him. In this sense, the Gallery also wants to be a meeting point for holding conferences and seminars. Likewise, he wants to make his extensive documentary collection available to the public, thus promoting research in the artistic field.
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The Gallery exhibits from October the model of the portico of the Cathedral and La Seu square, made by the master modelling maker and nativity scenes PERE SOLER (Tarragona 1941), renowned for his extensive artistic career, will artistic career, will continue to expand the exhibition based on the traditional places of the city.
ANTON EGUIGUREN (Zumaia 1946) will soon be exhibiting at La Catedral Gallery a wide range of his paintings and surrealist pictures. Eguiguren is an artist with more than 50 years of profession, with a very particular contemporary style, with a great colourist impact in his painting and whose oil and acrylic works in large format and mostly of female models, are characterised by their strong and flat colours, delimited by thick strokes with which his works acquire a special magic for the spectator.
The Gallery is organising an anthological exhibition of the recently deceased painter XAVIER RICOMA (Tarragona 1952-2023). Xavier Ricomá's pictorial work is surprising for its singular and fervent expressionism, with a great chromatic intensity, complemented by an overflowing material richness that in its twilights reaches a singular luminosity and a vibrant colouring that make his painting extraordinarily striking. Javier Ricomá used to say that he painted because it came from within him spiritually and never with a commercial objective in mind.
The Gallery La Catedral has scheduled an exhibition by the painter VALENTIN MANTEROLA (Zumaia 1946). Manterola belongs to the neo-figurative and neo-expressionist movement.
Manterola's work is of a singular and subtle elegance that fuses reality with his special vision of it, from his poetic and personal point of view as a painter, all in a singular and marvellous symphony of shapes and colours.
Manterola's work is now a benchmark of current art that has especially captured the essence of the overwhelming beauty of the Basque Country and together with his studio works has established his reputation as a great master of landscape and still life painting.
The Gallery, has scheduled within its exhibition schedule, the exhibition of the painter EMMA DOMINGUEZ (Tarragona 1953). Emma is a self-taught artist, with a figurative native style, according to her, inspired in part by the illustrator Hergé and by the painting of David Hockney.
Emma's themes in her work are wide-ranging, including country landscapes, cityscapes, intimate interiors and portraits. In all of them and with a wide palette of colours, Emma always captures the magic of a certain moment, with her special perception, style and sensitivity.
The Gallery La Catedral has on its agenda of upcoming exhibitions, that of the painter and ceramic sculptor TXIKI AGUIRRE GARATE (Arrona 1963) whose artistic name is Keixeta. Txiki Keixeta has a solid academic training, but he is basically a self-taught artist who has studied the features, modes and lines of the artists who have been his teachers, but he has never imitated them, but rather they have been a learning process and subconscious references for him to follow his personal and special path, as great artists do.
Keixeta's pictorial world is made up of a double, always personal look at the landscape and based on a lot of work, continuous research and conceptual elaboration, he achieves a very special and sublime abstraction of reality in his works which, as a great master, leaves no observer indifferent.
The Gallery La Catedral has scheduled in its exhibition schedule, that of the painter MARIA JOSE SANCHEZ IRANZO (Sagunto 1951). María José Sánchez studied at the Sanvisens Art School in Barcelona, where under the guidance of the prestigious painter Teresa Llacer, she acquired the style that has always characterised her, especially with the strokes and colours that give a special life and quality to her work, very close to the great masters of Catalan painting Ramon Sanvicens and Teresa Llacer and beyond, for the colours and strokes inspired by the work of Bonnard and Gauguin.
The work of María José Sánchez Iranzo, prolific in landscapes and seascapes, is within a modern figurative pictorial line that can be considered Fauvist and at the same time expressionist, with a wide freedom in the use of colours, with which she shows her special and characteristic personal artistic and poetic vision of reality.
The Gallery la Catedral has in its agenda of upcoming exhibitions, the painter TOMAS VALLS BIGORRA (Tarragona 1951). Valls Bigorra is an example of an emerging painter of special talent, discovered at a mature age.
Valls Bigorra's work can be classified as impressionist and realist, reminiscent, in part, of the work of the eminent painter from Reus, Josep Ferre Revascall, especially in his still lifes of grapes and roses, but with his own unique and distinctive personality that distinguishes his particular mastery, which is also reflected in his landscapes of a certain naïve style, with a singular freshness, vitality and great aesthetic appeal that connect in a very special way with the viewer.
