BOOKS. POETIC AND PLASTIC, TWO INTERSECTING WORLS
Text by Nahum Villèlia for the catalogue of the exhibition held at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art
(IVAM, as abbreviated in Valencian) in 1999.
(IVAM, as abbreviated in Valencian) in 1999.
What Moisès Villèlia conceived of as his books were the result of complementing his plastic world and his literary beginnings, beginnings of which he said some years later:
“My father suggestes that I should be a carver and sculptor like him. I preferred reading. I was passionately interested in Dovstoyevsky and Andreyev. All the poems that I wrote were attemps to give form to moments of silence, the croaking of frogs, the howling of dogs (…) I was interested in poems in which words created images.”
He always remembered the lines of Bécquer’s poem Volverán las oscuras golondrinas / en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar… (The dark swallows will return / to hang their nests in your balcony…) as one of those poems that create images and sequences. Although he developed with greater creative strength in sculpture, he went on writing and creating sequences of poetic images from everyday situations, and above all observing human behavior with its joys and sorrows and meannesses. He often recalled Nietzsche’s words “human, all too human”.
This world was also connected with his sculptures and appeared in some of their titles: El indiecito ya tiene caballito (Now the little Indian has a horse), A cuatro patas pero con dignidad (On all fours but with dignity),… But where his literary world took shape especially was in his drawings. Generally the drawings were the result of transferring onto paper his sculptural experiments with the materials with which he was working. Thus his experiments with wire gave rise to series such as Los hombres en calidad de alambre (Men in terms of wire); his work with lacquered thread led to the drawings of telas de araña (cobwebs); his sculptures with cane produced various series of drawings of cane; and the tubes of asbestos cement led to series with tubes of asbestos cement.
Other drawings arose from observation, such as the two series Los fantasmas (Phantoms) and Los cromosomas (Chromosomes). From his observation of bamboo shoots he made a study of lines which led him to create anthropomorphic characters that he called Fantasmas. On learning about the X-shape of chromosomes from his conversations with Dr. Viñas and Dr. Jean Dausset, who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1980, he started making studies of shapes until he discovered various new anthropomorphic lines that he called El mundo de los cromosomas (The world of Chromosomes).
In other series he created sequences that were more plastic than literary, envisaging the paper not as a flat surface but as a material that he could pierce, cut and interweave. All those drawings came together to create series, and some of the series were conceived in the form of books. Sometimes the poems or texts were simply an introduction to those books, as in the case of Los hombres en calidad de alambre, Las sillas (The chairs), Las semillas del manglar no germinaron (The mangrove seeds did not germinate), etc. In other cases the texts complemented the drawings: El libro de Amós (The book of Amos), El libro de los cometas (The book of comets), etc. In others, texts were interspersed with drawings: Besalel, Los libros de las cañas (The books of canes), etc.
In some books he dispensed with text completely, yet that did not prevent his poetic world from being recounted in terms of characters such as phantoms or chromosomes. Those characters took on their own life, expressed emotions and proceeded to live on little planets with lanscapes of cane, wire, cobwebs, asbestos cement tubes, and so forth.
He also made two books in collaboration with the poet Joan Brossa, as well as the sculptural closing device for the book Cop de poma.
“My father suggestes that I should be a carver and sculptor like him. I preferred reading. I was passionately interested in Dovstoyevsky and Andreyev. All the poems that I wrote were attemps to give form to moments of silence, the croaking of frogs, the howling of dogs (…) I was interested in poems in which words created images.”
He always remembered the lines of Bécquer’s poem Volverán las oscuras golondrinas / en tu balcón sus nidos a colgar… (The dark swallows will return / to hang their nests in your balcony…) as one of those poems that create images and sequences. Although he developed with greater creative strength in sculpture, he went on writing and creating sequences of poetic images from everyday situations, and above all observing human behavior with its joys and sorrows and meannesses. He often recalled Nietzsche’s words “human, all too human”.
This world was also connected with his sculptures and appeared in some of their titles: El indiecito ya tiene caballito (Now the little Indian has a horse), A cuatro patas pero con dignidad (On all fours but with dignity),… But where his literary world took shape especially was in his drawings. Generally the drawings were the result of transferring onto paper his sculptural experiments with the materials with which he was working. Thus his experiments with wire gave rise to series such as Los hombres en calidad de alambre (Men in terms of wire); his work with lacquered thread led to the drawings of telas de araña (cobwebs); his sculptures with cane produced various series of drawings of cane; and the tubes of asbestos cement led to series with tubes of asbestos cement.
Other drawings arose from observation, such as the two series Los fantasmas (Phantoms) and Los cromosomas (Chromosomes). From his observation of bamboo shoots he made a study of lines which led him to create anthropomorphic characters that he called Fantasmas. On learning about the X-shape of chromosomes from his conversations with Dr. Viñas and Dr. Jean Dausset, who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1980, he started making studies of shapes until he discovered various new anthropomorphic lines that he called El mundo de los cromosomas (The world of Chromosomes).
In other series he created sequences that were more plastic than literary, envisaging the paper not as a flat surface but as a material that he could pierce, cut and interweave. All those drawings came together to create series, and some of the series were conceived in the form of books. Sometimes the poems or texts were simply an introduction to those books, as in the case of Los hombres en calidad de alambre, Las sillas (The chairs), Las semillas del manglar no germinaron (The mangrove seeds did not germinate), etc. In other cases the texts complemented the drawings: El libro de Amós (The book of Amos), El libro de los cometas (The book of comets), etc. In others, texts were interspersed with drawings: Besalel, Los libros de las cañas (The books of canes), etc.
In some books he dispensed with text completely, yet that did not prevent his poetic world from being recounted in terms of characters such as phantoms or chromosomes. Those characters took on their own life, expressed emotions and proceeded to live on little planets with lanscapes of cane, wire, cobwebs, asbestos cement tubes, and so forth.
He also made two books in collaboration with the poet Joan Brossa, as well as the sculptural closing device for the book Cop de poma.
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