André Romão

NoguerasBlanchard is very pleased to announce the third chapter of Paired Histories. Continuing the experimental curatorial programme we have been developing over recent years, this season will be overseen by Joaquín García Martín, founder of the former Madrid gallery garcía | galería. Proposing relationships between various artists and literary figures and works, this cycle presents an/other look at some of the key artists showcased by the gallery between 2012 and 2020 in Doctor Fourquet, Madrid.

“Death in Spring” is a posthumous novel by acclaimed Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda (Barcelona, 1908 – Gerona, 1983) that narrates the life cycle of its protagonist in the context of a small, closed village. Set in a fictional rural world tied to nature and its cycles, the novel presents a society ruled by sacrificial rituals and traditions which are as cruel as the natural world that surrounds them, and where the individual loses out to the needs and welfare of the collective.

André Romão (Lisbon 1984) has also examined astonishment, cruelty and transformation in his recent work, notably in his series which revolves around the classical myth of the Metamorphoses and the writings of Ovid, and which the artist presented in the project “Fauna” at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon in 2019. The work method employed in “Fauna” is the same as that which Mercè Rodoreda used in her novel, with the union of apparently disparate elements forcing us to look at the world from another perspective. In his case, Romão dwells with special interest on the tactile and the sensory, using the physical as a point of entry into systems of representation.

The world of the novel is evoked through André Romão’s sculptures, which are neither a literal illustration of the book nor a collection of works inspired by it, but rather an immersion into a world they both share, into the forms that populate this world, and into a work method shared by both creators.

With many thanks to Galeria Vera Cortês.

André Romão was born in Lisbon, where he trained as an artist and where he continues to work and live. He has participated in residencies in London, Barcelona, ​​Rome and Berlin. He exhibits regularly with the Vera Cortés gallery in Lisbon and with Umberto di Marino in Naples.

Among other institutions, he has shown his work at the Museu Coleção Berardo, Lisbon, MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Rome, at the CAPC in Bordeaux, at the Serralves Foundation in Oporto or The Green Parrot in Barcelona. He has also participated in the Liverpool Biennial in 2021.

Mercè Rodoreda (1908-1983) is one of the great Catalan-language writers of the 20th century. She was born in Barcelona in a family environment linked to the Renaixença that instilled in her a love for the Catalan language. Her fascination with flowers also began in childhood.

She began her literary career in the 1920s as an escape from the limitations of the life of a wife and mother, although she would later deny her first works. During the war she actively mobilized in favour of the Republican side and wrote her first great novel, Aloma (1936).

During the more than thirty years of exile in France and Switzerland she wrote fundamental works such as La Plaça del Diamant (The Diamond Square) (1962) o El carrer de les Camèlies (The Street of the Camellias) (1966). She will not live in Spain again until 1972, when she returns as a myth of Catalan letters and settles in Romanyà de la Selva and publishes Broken mirror (Mirall Trencat) (1974). Over the last ten years of her life, she worked on the manuscript of La mort i la primavera (Death and Spring) which remained unfinished at her death in 1983.

Joaquín García Martín was born in Madrid and studies Art History at the UCM.

He has been part of the DOMÉSTICO collective from 2000 to 2008.

As a manager, he has collaborated with a large number of contemporary art institutions, both public and private.

In 2012 he founded garcía | galería that will run until its closure in 2020.

He is currently conducting the series of podcasts of interviews with current Spanish creators “Hablar normal y corriente” for Editorial Caniche.

Recently curated the exhibition “Cuestion de Ambiente” at CentroCentro, Madrid.