Two friends who triumphed painting gypsies

BarcelonaBoth of them grew up in the same Barcelona neighborhood during the last third of the 19th century, studied fine arts at La Llotja, were part of the same artistic group –la Colla del Safrà– and, later, excelled in the portraiture, pictorial or literary, of a parallel, vibrant, and marginalized reality, that of the gypsies. "How is it possible that such close friends were never mentioned together in the press of the time?", asks Julià Guillamon (Barcelona, 1962) in relation to two of the figures who have obsessed him for decades, the painter Isidre Nonell (Barcelona, 1872-1911) and the writer Juli Vallmitjana (Barcelona, 1873-1937). This question has led him to dedicate a lavish 700-page essay to the two creators, written in collaboration with Joan Mar Sauqué, Nonell, Vallmitjana i els gitanos (Edicions de 1984, 2026), and to showcase the relationship between them, until now little studied, in an exhibition at the Fundació Palau de Caldes d'Estrac, which can be visited until September 27.

"I came to Vallmitjana in the 80s, because some of his books were found in the Sant Antoni market, such as Coses vistes i coses imaginades [1906] and Sota Montjuïc [1908]", recalls Guillamon. Vallmitjana was, at that time, a forgotten author, and the first attempt at recovery – with Com comencem a patir [1908], published by Rescripta in 1989– went unnoticed. Almost fifteen years later, Edicions de 1984 made a mark with La Xava, a novel from 1910 set in the poorest areas of 20th-century Barcelona and which had the endorsement of Enric Casasses. "We are faced with a first-rate, brilliant writer, and he is very important, because he is the only one who has delved deeply into the language of the rabble (just as, in other works, he enters into that of the gypsies)", wrote Casasses in the prologue to the 2003 edition, and a little later, he assured: "This truth is the main characteristic of Vallmitjana: the characters' speech is true, the story he tells is true, the world he portrays is true, and even the way he portrays it is, also, true".

Immediately Casasses and Guillamon worked together on a new edition of the collection of nine stories De la raça que es perd, from 1906 (Edicions de 1984, 2005), and the good reception the book received allowed them to continue unearthing part of Vallmitjana's legacy: to the unpublished late novel Albí (1932, recovered in 2007) were added the two volumes that collected the author's theatre (published in 2006 and 2007) and the novel De la ciutat vella (1907, recovered in 2018). "When Edicions de 1984 began to reissue Vallmitjana, the covers featured gypsies by Nonell: at that time, the two were intuitively linked, even though we didn't know all that we know now," assures Guillamon.

Nonell, Vallmitjana and the gypsies aims to show that the painter and the writer were friends for years, starting with their lives in the same neighborhood: "Vallmitjana's father had a silversmith workshop on Graciamat street – now disappeared–. Nonell's father's noodle factory was on Sant Pere més baix street," says Guillamon. Vallmitjana, who in his literary work worked "from the most immediate reality," set De la ciutat vella in the streets and venues where he moved during his youth, before the opening of Via Laietana in the early 20th century led to the demolition of a large part of the neighborhood.

From the Café de l'Infern to the summer of Boí

"One of the most amusing settings in Vallmitjana's novel is the Cafè de l'Infern, located at the corner of Riera de Sant Joan and Carrer de l'Infern, very close to where he lived – he explains–. Picasso and Carles Casagemas had a studio at number 17 of Riera de Sant Joan. There is an oil painting by Picasso from 1903 showing the street at dawn. Only one light is on, that of the Cafè de l'Infern, which must have been open all night or very late." Guillamon suggests that it is likely that Nonell and Vallmitjana first met in this nocturnal and debauched atmosphere. He formulates this hypothesis based on the testimony of Santiago Meléndez, who had known Nonell in the 1890s and who years later, from exile in Chile, told anecdotes to Domènec Guansé (Tarragona, 1894-Barcelona, 1978), who included them in one of the profiles of Retrats de l'exili, published by Adesiara in 2015: "Meléndez is the only one who talks about the first painting studio Nonell had, in Riera de Sant Joan", recalls Guillamon. Guansé explains, in Retrats de l'exili, that the studio was next to "a very picturesque café called L'Infern, where they put on puppet shows on Sunday afternoons, and where Nonell often went to wander and sketch".

Vallmitjana and Nonell met a little later studying at La Llotja – the School of Fine Arts of Barcelona – and were part of the Colla del Safrà, between 1893 and 1896, along with Joaquim Mir, Ricard Canals, Ramon Pichot and Adrià Gual. The latter recalled the group's beginnings many years later in his memoirs, Mitja vida de teatre, published posthumously in 1960 by Aedos. Of Nonell, he said he was "shy and daring at the same time" and that he "painted the mud of the city's factory outskirts, waiting for the full lights to reveal the world of his glorious gypsy scenes". He described Vallmitjana as an "enthusiast in those moments of fervent hesitation".

In 1895, when "Vallmitjana was 22 years old and had begun to frequent artistic circles, a upheaval occurred – Guillamon recalls –. His father sent him to the Boí spa, which he had acquired thanks to a public auction." Young Vallmitjana had to spend the winter in the Pyrenees to take charge of the facilities. "I imagine Vallmitjana as Jack Torrance from The Shining, surrounded by snow, in the mountains, increasingly mad", we read in the essay. In the summer of 1896, Vallmitjana found a temporary solution to his problem: "He invited two of his painter friends, Nonell and Canals, to the spa to work a little and have as much fun as they could". During those months, they became interested in immortalizing some residents of the region affected by cretinism, a form of hypothyroidism resulting from inbreeding that causes developmental delays, both physical and mental. "Cruel chronicler of the miseries that nature and society engender, undoubtedly those unfortunate idiots, condemned to a deformation that is not lacking in picturesque traits, must have hurt the illustrator's imagination – one could read in La Vanguardia in the autumn of that year, when Nonell's works were exhibited for the first time –. (...) From the world of the grotesque, the ugly, the stinking, types of artistic beauty, imperishable and universal, can be drawn".

The money they earned in Boí, for Canals and Nonell, served in part to pay for their first trip to Paris in 1897, which changed their lives. That same year was also decisive for Vallmitjana, but for another reason: on April 18, his father committed suicide. "We have all wept for you; we all lament the void you have left; our smiling faces have turned into a symbol of sadness", wrote the son in La Renaixensa that same year. Vallmitjana had to carry on the family workshop and let go of his ambition to paint pictures, although he soon began to paint them in writing.

Sell pictures and fill stages

"When, in 1900, Nonell had to return to Barcelona from Paris ill with syphilis, he felt like a failed painter –comments Guillamon–. Vallmitjana changed his life: now he is a married silversmith with a daughter." Nevertheless, the passion of the two friends for the underworld will remain and will become one of the axes of their works, especially through the representation of gypsies. "Nobody took them very seriously for a few years –states Guillamon–. Neither of them are modernists. Alexandre Plana, who was a friend of both, placed Nonell in the Almanac of the Noucentistes, because he considered that his paintings were not just representations of gypsies, but works of art".

Nonell did not manage to sell his paintings until a year before his death. It was in 1910, when at the exhibition at Faianç Català he sold paintings to "rich buyers" such as lawyers Amadeu Hurtado and Pere Milà and collector Lluís Plandiura; also to "artists" such as painters Ramon Casas and Miquel Utrillo, the writer Josep Pous i Pagès and the philosopher Francesc Pujols. "It was a success of the cenacle, in which a series of educated and influential people bought Nonell's paintings as a proclamation – says Guillamon–. It did not have immediate continuity, because when he died in 1911, his paintings ended up in the family's noodle factory, and there they remained for years, until from a posthumous exhibition in 1923 a positive current was created around his art and its impact grew".

The case of Vallmitjana was different: in five years he went from having his books printed – which he initially signed as J.V. Colominas – to enjoying immense theatrical success thanks to the play The zin-calós (1911). "After Guimerà, he was the most performed Catalan playwright with The gypsies –comments Guillamon–. The work is a Romeo and Juliet among nomadic and sedentary gypsies. Although today it's hard to follow due to the slang, it has the ability to detect a constant in human history, the debate between nomadism and sedentarism, and to explain it through an impossible love story between two young people." At the Barcelona premiere in January 1911, Margarida Xirgu played the role of the young gypsy woman.

"Vallmitjana was an incontinent author, and the success of Els zin-calós spurred him to write a lot – says Guillamon–. In 1911 alone, he premiered six more works, among which were Muntanyes blanques, El corb and En Terregada, about a roguish gypsy who also appears in Sota Montjuïc". In the book, Guillamon delves into the diversity of Nonell's and Vallmitjana's approach to the gypsy world: "Nonell's gypsy women are noble and beautiful. Fallen on hard times, if you will, but their gesture reflects humanity and tragic nobility". Vallmitjana, on the other hand, goes in a different direction: "His gypsies are capricious and eccentric".

In addition to dedicating himself to artistic creation and having shared a close friendship for years, Nonell and Vallmitjana also had in common a difficult character that was, in part, what eventually estranged them. In the still unpublished Lletres al meu fill David, written in the 1930s, Juli Vallmitjana highlights his "very exalted genius": he attributes it to his "nerves" and "to the urge that both had" to excite him. Of Isidre Nonell, Artur Bladé Desumvila writes to Francesc Pujols per ell mateix (Pòrtic, 1967) that he "couldn't stand painters at all": of the "ultra-academic" Brull, he criticizes "that he paints with a condom"; he laughs at Domènec Carles because although he is "more elegant" than him, he doesn't "sleep with so many women".

"They fought over a trifle – assures Guillamon–. In Coses vistes i imaginades, Vallmitjana mentions a marine newt and Nonell corrects him because they are freshwater animals. Vallmitjana takes it badly: a dear friend has rubbed that mistake in his face". Shortly after, Vallmitjana took revenge on Nonell in De la ciutat vella (1907), where he ridiculed him through the character of the painter Grassa, whom he accuses of repeating himself. From then on, the two friends distanced themselves. "The separation between Nonell and Vallmitjana must have caused a stir, and it splashed into the circles of friends of one and the other – comments Guillamon–. They were so angry that Vallmitjana, when Nonell died on February 21, 1911, did not dedicate a single line to him in the press, even though he wrote constantly".