Year 11

Guillem Viladot

POEMA DE L’HOME [Man’s Poem]

The work that was inaugurated on July 16, 2022 at La Vinya dels Artistes, was created in 1972. Viladot made Poema de l’home [Man’s poem] in poster format, with the collaboration of Josep Iglésias del Marquet. Just one year later it would materialize in book format and the trilogy of works that would revolve around this anthropocentric concept would begin. In this work, the succession of letters of the alphabet placed in pairs—the same letter on the right and the reverse—generates a space between them where several words are inserted. The first of these words is think, which is followed by a whole series of words that indicate parts of the body: from the forehead to the feet. A vertical journey, then, where the letters incorporate – never better said – one’s own flesh and, finally, send it towards the utopia to which the last words of the poem invite us: pass, path, horizon, light and freedom. Now, away from the paper, the letters of the alphabet and the words that accompany them are spread over a monumental space that gives the original project an almost theological dimension. Guillem Viladot, the man, and his poem, are line and pilaster, voice and landscape.

The “Poem of Man” that will be inaugurated at La Vinya dels Artistes is an interpretation by Jaume Farreny that starts from “Poesia Concreta” to draw an “Architectural Poem”. Joan Jové Solé, blacksmith, co-owner of the Mas Blanch i Jové winery, and craftsman who gives shape to the different creations exhibited in this unique space that is La Vinya dels Artistes, has been in charge of the executive production.

The work was previously presented at La Seu Vella in Lleida where it was temporarily exhibited. And it is La Vinya dels Artistes, an outdoor exhibition hall among vineyards and olive trees, the place that welcomes him from now on. The chosen location is a dry stone wall above a cultivated field. The letters fly over the space and, as it is a heavily marinated area, the poem seems to dance with the olive trees. The words eyes, nose, lips, hands, fingers, belly, sex, pass, path, horizon, man, freedom… They melt with stone, nature, the sky, infinity.

The inauguration that was held on July 16 had more than 500 attendees who were also able to visit other sculptures found in La Vinya dels Artistes, the works on permanent display in the winery and a temporary exhibition by Guillem Viladot in the Winery Lounge area.

The completely outdoor party consisted of an open-air dinner paired with wines from the Mas Blanch i Jové winery, a performance by the Agramunt Teatredetics theater group and music by Lo Pardal Roquer, with a song created in tribute to Viladot.

“Now, away from the paper, the letters of the alphabet and the words that accompany them are spread over a monumental space that gives the original project an almost theological dimension. Guillem Viladot, the man, and his poem, are line and pilaster, voice and landscape.”

“The “Poem of Man” that will be inaugurated at La Vinya dels Artistes is an interpretation by Jaume Farreny that starts from “Poesia Concreta” to draw an “Architectural Poem””

Pau Minguet

Fotos: Albert Malet, Elsa García i Montse Solà

Opening. Event year 11 at the Artists’ Vineyard.

Màgnum Edició Col·leccionista Eva Lootz

Magnum Collectors’ Edition
Guillem Viladot

Eva Lootz

Guillem Viladot
Agramunt, 1922 – Barcelona, 1999

Guillem Viladot Puig was born in Agramunt in 1922, into a family of pharmacists. After spending his childhood and much of his youth in Agramunt, he moved to Barcelona to study Pharmacy at the University of Barcelona. In 1949 he graduated and settled back in his hometown to work in his father’s pharmacy. In 1950 he fell ill and, convalescing, wrote Temps d’estrena, starting a series of novels that define his myth of Riella, a fictitious toponym of Agramunt: Els infants de Riella (1965), Aril Avall (1966), La gent i el vent (1967), L’arrel de panical (1970) and Memòria de Riella (1974).

In parallel with the discursive work, in 1959 he wrote Metaplasmes and in 1960 IA-URT, which began his experiences as a concrete poet, destructuring alphabetic and linguistic codes. He became a forerunner of Concrete Poetry (a subgenre of Visual Poetry) and the first publisher of a book of this type in Spain, with the work Estrips that he published in Agramunt in 1964, and with the Nou-plast- poems from 1965, and which motivate an entire work as a visual poet that he develops throughout his career.

At the end of the seventies, he became interested in psychoanalysis, which he integrated into his essays with novels such as Ricard (1977), La llei de pedra (1979), L’amo (1982) or Discurs horizontal (1982). These works precede the cycle of historical novels of a psychological nature, such as Joana (1991), or Carles (1994) and the collections of his complete poetry, collected in five volumes, as well as his last novels: Els ulls (1999), Les vellositats (1999), Ruth (2000) and La energia (2001).

He cultivated a wide range of artistic manifestations, both literary and plastic. The questioning of literary conventions often took him to the borders between genres. As a creator he showed a dissident and marginal attitude towards the various forms of power. The novels La cendra (1970), Ricard (1976), L’amo (1980), Memorial de Na Nona (1983), Carles (1994), Autobiografia de Déu (1998), among others, are examples of this. .

But we must also talk about his poetic work, with an experimentalist side that takes him to the poem-object and also to poetic prose, always from an exhaustive reading of the avant-garde. His was a work that exuded modernity during the difficult post-war years, and which was published in small author editions until the 80s, when Edicions del Mall published his celebrated Amor Físic (1983). Since then, several publishing houses – Mall, Columna, Pagès – have carried out the task of bringing to light his complete poems, which have been collected in five volumes, the last of which was published posthumously: Poesia Completa V (2004).

He collaborated in the magazines and newspapers La Mañana, Segre, La Vanguardia, Diari de Lleida, El Observador, Avui, El Periódico (Lleida supplement), Labor, Ciudad, Destino, Sió, Oriflama and Serra d’Or. During the nineties, he opened the Lo Pardal buildings in Agramunt, a house dedicated to Visual Poetry, which since 2000 has today housed the Guillem Viladot Private Foundation, a museum dedicated to preserving his memory.

He has been an honorary member of the Catalan Language Writers Association and received the Cross of Sant Jordi in 1993.