Teresa Vall Palou's chromatic experimentation seduces the south of Madrid

Fuenlabrada (Madrid)A "burst of color" on fourteen meters of canvas welcomes the major exhibition dedicated to the painting of Teresa Vall Palou (Lleida, 1951). More than sixty works by the Lleida artist, practically all of them large format, have been since the end of February – and will continue to be until the beginning of May – the main attraction of the program at the Tomás y Valiente Art Center (CEART) in Fuenlabrada. Located about 20 kilometers from the main museums in the heart of Madrid, the CEART is "a reference center for the south of the Community", with a relevant trajectory in the field of museography focused on contemporary art. "Very many Catalan artists have had their first major exhibition here instead of in Madrid," explains to ARA the art director of CEART, Juan Carlos Moya, surrounded by the main compositions of the last ten years of Vall Palou's artistic production, grouped under the title Chromatic Atmospheres.

The 700 m² of the main hall, which now offer the visitor Vall Palou's experimentation with color and form, had previously hosted the work of Catalan artists such as Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró, Joan Brossa, and Antoni Pitxot. And also international artists such as Paula Rego and Sebastião Salgado. Initially, this string of recognized names made Moya hesitate at the proposal of the Miguel Marcos gallery to bet on the Lleida artist. "She has been painting for the last sixty years, but in absolute opacity," recounts the CEART director, who, after studying the artist in depth, concluded that "all of Vall Palou's artistic, social, and cognitive idiosyncrasy" fit with the "values" of the center.

Although the painter has been producing painting, sculpture, and ceramics for decades, the CEART has decided against a retrospective of the Lleida artist and proposes a tour exclusively of her most recent work. "It was important for us to say that she is alive, and that she is working this strongly and powerfully," claims Moya, who has observed that, in the eight weeks it has been on display, Vall Palou's work has connected strongly with the public and, especially, with the gaze of young people, in their twenties and thirties, seduced by the artist's "creative freedom of color and form."

"Conscious Unconsciousness"

From the chromatic combination of reddish tones at the entrance, the exhibition route moves through other more somber shades and combines compositions in which layers of paint are superimposed that "overflow" the two-meter canvases with others that give space to white. The compositions of stains that the artist has allowed to expand on the canvas stand out in a bet, according to Moya, on "conscious unconsciousness." In some cases, an atmosphere of translucent and blurred color surrounds the form painted by Vall Palou. "She knows what she wants, but she leaves the glazes diluted so that when [the paint] evaporates, chance intervenes," he describes. Although the exhibition presents the artist as someone who has not worked under any artistic movement, it does place her with points of contact with abstraction and the work of Pollock, Rothko, and Morris Louis.