Year 6

Frederic Amat

ESCLAT

Frederic Amat, whose ancestors have roots in La Pobla de Cérvoles and were the creators of the Espasa Encyclopaedia, created “Esclat” [Burst], an installation that wants to dress the stone with light and a splash of ceramic points that merge with the landscape and illuminate the rocks. An intimate tribute to his mother Pilar Noguera Espada, who died five months after giving birth to the artist.

“I came to a bend where I was magnetised by five large rocks and a grotto that, like a large stone tongue, jutted out from the road, inviting me to leave an almost hidden artistic testimony in its cavity, generator of a starlight like a thousand ceramic points. A burst that splashes with reflections and covers the naked stone with light”

“I needed to add my singular approach to this place in La Pobla de Cérvoles, from where one day, in the mid-19th century, my great-grandfather José Espasa Anguera emigrated, with his brother Pau, to Barcelona to survive this dry land. In 1858 he found a job delivering editions of novels and stories in fascicles that at that time were in great demand (…) two years later, at the age of twenty-one, he founded the Espasa publishing house that would later edit the first encyclopaedia in the Spanish language: “Universal European American Encyclopaedia”, known as the “Espasa Encyclopaedia’”.

Frederic Amat

Opening. Year 6 at the Artists’ Vineyard.

Magnum collector’s edition
Frederic Amat

 

Frederic Amat
BARCELONA 1952

A painter whose work challenges simple categorisation. His work has been exhibited and published throughout the world. His open conception of painting has led him to integrate multiple artistic languages into his creative work.

He has made set designs for dance and theatre based on texts by García Lorca, Beckett, Juan Goytisolo, Koltès and Octavio Paz. He has also directed and shaped the stage spaces of the opera Journey of the Simorgh by Sánchez Verdú and the oratorios Oedipus Rex by Stravinsky, Cocteau and Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo by Caldara. He has also illustrated several literary works such as One Thousand and One Nights and The Odyssey.

In his interventions in architectural spaces he has developed projects that combine painting, sculpture and ceramics: El Mural de las Ollas, Villanurbs, Lluvia de Sangre and Muro de Ojos. In the same direction, he has extended painting into the field of cinematography in films such as Viaje a la luna, Fuego en el cántaro, El Aullido, Danse Noire and Diez Dedos.