www.marionamilla.com

Mariona Millà is extraordinarily full of vitality, as a woman as too she is as an artist.  Or in other words, since she is so full of vitality and her artistic skills are so varied – drawing, painting, etching, sculpting, teaching... – one would expect no less of her in the way in which she acted in her daily life as a woman, wife, mother and friend. I have known her for many years, but my earliest memory of her is when, still young, married, with three children: Roger, Oriol and Arnau, I would bump into them on Saturdays in her grandfather’s and father’s shop – the famous Millà bookshop at 21 Saint Paul’s Street in Barcelona -, where I went for a chat now and then. She was discreet and acted as if she was only concerned with her own tasks, but it was noticeable that she followed our conversations with interest, as we jumped from one subject to another, sometimes exitedly if we touched on political and social subjects which were close to our hearts – this was during the Franco dictatorship – wanting to resolve them with drastic solutions even if only in theory. At that time, Grandfather Millà – I knew Grandfather Àngel Millà although there had been others before as I shall explain later on – seated on a chair like a presiding abbot set in the middle of the bookshop, asking for moderation to the playwright, the former actor, the collector of works by Guimerà, the journalist interested in old humourous magazines as well as others gathered there, who, either standing and leaning on a pile of old books or sitting on stools which wobbled on the uneven floor, made up the aforementioned group of friends, who met regularly for informal discussion of particular issues or common interests. Mariona, at the back of the shop and a certain distance from us, didn’t say a word, and continued to try to entertain her children with coloured paper and pencils which she had given them to draw with; but we all noticed that she watched us with her magnificent wide-open eyes, unsurprised by our sometimes shocking comments; in fact quite the opposite, she seemed to want us to go as far as possible in our – theoretical rather than practical alas! – desire to revolt! From that time onwards, I knew that Mariona Millà held within herself an eternal flame which did not flicker with winds of change or the rain of uncertainty. She searches and doubts as everyone does but she knows she will never give up being faithful to her own free will to reach the limits of pureness of her ideas and to demand honesty in people’s conduct.

Now Mariona Millà Salinas, born in Barcelona on 29^th May, 1954 – I cite this biographical fact straight away so that one can understand that, in her prime as a woman, she can still offer us lots as an artist – exhibited for the first time as a painter, thirty years ago. She is also at the threshold of the third decade since she exhibited on her own. Two good reasons, in fact, to try to analyse her artistic career and attempt to find the key to a process, rich in activities.

 

Theatre and books

I have already said that Mariona Millà is from a family of booksellers specialising in works on the theatre, ranging from general books to the buying and selling of antique and second hand books. But I believe it would be good to give the reader a little historical biography about her ancestors on her father’s side and about the environment she has been in since birth, as these are details which will help to better understand the evolution of her works. She is their exclusive author, but the Millà family and the Barcelona, which they have helped to shape as booksellers for over five generations, have also left their mark.

The first of all these would have to be her great great grandfather, Melcior Millà, ex-magician, that’s to say, someone who performed in public places doing hand-tricks. Melcior Millà, whose hands were however too big and clumsy, never managed to do such slick tricks as his friend, Fructuós Calonge and this is why he opted for a change of career and in the last years of the Nineteenth Century, he set up a stall at a book fair which took place weekly in Barcelona University Square. In his “Book of Old Booksellers and Bookcollectors in Barcelona, then and now” (Published by Millà, 1949), Jaume Passarell wrote that “he was a fussy man and set up his stall with great care”. He later moved on to the “Encants” market on Urgell Street, assisted by his grandson, Àngel whom I will talk about when I come to him.

Great Grandather Lluís Millà i Gàcio (Madrid, 1865-Barcelona, 1946), was reared in the theatre and as a comic actor he worked in many companies. He acted until 1902 even though in 1900 he founded the book shop and theatrical archive which carry his name at 21 Saint Paul’s Street, Barcelona, still run by his family today. He published magazines such as La Dida, Folletí Teatral and El Teatre Mundial, as well as a bibliographic catalogue of Catalan Theatre, which listed around five thousand titles. He participated in various magazines – among them L’Esquella de la Torratxa- with humurous verses and documented more than two hundred theatrical works on various topics: monologues, short works for children, scripts for finger-puppets and dramas. For professional companies as well as amateur ones – numerous during his time - he set up a hire-service of copies of different roles for actors. Stage directors and prompters bought and hired whole texts, however, professional company members only needed to learn the many or few phrases which belonged to them in each drama or comedy. The copies were done first by hand and later by typewriter in tune with the rudimentary systems which existed at the time and which were improved as technology advanced. The business grew and grew for decades until the extensive use of the photocopying machine made it cheaper for companies to buy a single copy of each work which they wanted to represent.

Grandfather Àngel Millà i Navarro (Barcelona, 1980-1975) as a young man had been a professional rower, taking part in international competitions as well as a footballer although in the latter, his enthusiasm outweighed his possibilities of getting the ball in the net. Since he had helped Grandfather Melcior to set up the stall and knew the book business, he set up a shop on his own. It didn’t go as well he wished and he moved on to help and later succeed his father at the bookshop on Saint Paul’s Street. As an editor, he was a good businessman and published the children’s weekly Fatty and sport magazines La Jornada Deportiva, La Pelota Semanal and El Campeón, the latter with drawings by Ricard Opisso in the central pages of the most important moments of the football matches with players such as Samitier, Zamora amongst other popular players of that time. Married and with a family he lived at various abodes before finally moving into the bookshop in Saint Paul’s Street.

As a publisher, Àngel Millà promoted various important works; the most important of which being the Biographical Dictionary of Artists in Catalonia in three volumes, commonly known as “Ràfols Dictionary” thanks to the architect and art dealer, Joan Francesc Ràfols, in charge of its preparation. (The dictionary was to be republished years later by Martí March, promotor of art books, who passed away at the age of eighty-one, having made it his life-long work with four more volumes to which, later on, other publishers would add a fifth).

As a publisher of theatrical works, Àngel Millà was well known in Catalonia and not one working day went by without a visit from an errand-runner (now a lost profession) from villages, some of them well hidden away within the geography of Catalonia, in order to hire parts for comedies or dramas, as well as to buy volumes of the collection “Theatrical Catalonia”, which his father has started and which he continued with great enthusiasm. And on Sundays, first of all on Paral.lel Avenue and later under the covered walkway of St. Anthony’s Market, he would also go to sell books. In this task, he was aided by his son, Lluís, Mariona’s father and who we will discuss in his own right later on. Well respected within the profession, Àngel Millà helped to create the Antique Booksellers Guild and along with Josep Melgosa and Felip Alum, two good professionals of their time, set up the Antique and Modern Second hand book fair for the Mercè festivities in 1952 which has been going now for more than fifty shows.

Grandfather Àngel Millà was a very decisive man, active in the difusion of antique books and the promotion of popular culture. As too was his son, Lluís Millà i Reig, Mariona’s father. Born in 1921 in Barcelona, we know that from a very early age, he helped his father with the bookshop and publishing house. He aided and expanded the continuation of the “Theatrical Catalonia” collection. Now he sees, in the shape of his own son, Lluís Millà i Salinas, Mariona’s brother, born in Barcelona in 1957, the most direct successor to the family tradition.

I would still like to add, in order to establish the atmosphere of love for books and Catalan culture in general in which the artist in question was brought up, that one of Great great Grandfather’s brothers, Francesc Millà i Gàcio (Gràcia, nowadays Barcelona 1875 – Barcelona 1968), typesetter by trade and with new ideas, acquired during his professional training in Paris, founded a cooperative printing press La Neotípia (1905-1941).

Finally, to bring to an end this review of family influences, it is also worth mentioning Great Uncle Marià Millà i Navarro (Barcelona 1892-1968), who ended up establishing himself as an antique bookseller and art broker in one of the stalls near the Santa Madrona gateway at the beginning of the Ramba. I mention him, because he completes this family portrait and because his activities approach the painting business without leaving that of bookselling. I would like to mention, however that Mariona Millà’s most direct family, despite their principal interest in theatre, books and writing, were also involved with painters and sketchers. Àngel Millà, for example was a good friend of Ricard Opisso, Antoni Roca amongst other cartoonists of their time, who often visited him in the bookshop for long hours of conversation. And her father, Lluìs Millà as a young man attended drawing and painting classes at the Massana Art and Design School and had also assisted in the illuminating of “D’Ivori”, a series of collector’s book, published by Joan Vila.

 

That year of 1954

Once family details have been established, I think that it is convenient to give some references about the year, 1954, the year in which Mariona Millà came into the world. She did not know what was going on, since awareness of environment is something which is achieved as you grow in age and capacity to comprehend, but I think that the explaining of a few facts, on an international scale as well as a local one, will allow us to better understand the context in which she was to be found and establish links with others.

The year, 1954 is the year of the battle of Diem Bien Fu and of the bomb test which exploded in the Pacific Ocean; of the death of the painters André Derain and Henri Matisse; of the death of the Catalan philosopher and writer, Eugeni d’Ors and of the Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi. It is also the year of the arrival of the ship Semiramis to the port of Barcelona, repatriating many Spanish soldiers who had been held prisoners in Russia since the Second World War. As far as economic revival amongst the lower classes is concerned, one must mention the sales success of the Biscuter - little cars of 197 cc. engines with three gears (they did not have reverse) and which could reach, according to the advertising, a maximum speed of 75 Km/hour.

On the literary scene, 1954 is the year of the success of Bonjour Tristesse, a novel about a nineteen year old girl, written by Françoise Sagan. It is also the year in which the Barcelona writer, Ana María Matute wins the Planeta prize for Pequeño Teatro (Small Theatre). As for the Nobel Prize for Literature, the winner is the North American writer, Ernest Hemingway, whilst in France the work Les Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir finds great success.

Within the world of the theatre, Jacinto Benavente, famous author, now almost forgotten, dies; Nobel Prize for Literature winner Josep M. Sagarra opens at the Romea theatre La Ferida Lluminosa (The Shining Wound) and in Madrid, Joaquín Calvo Sotelo presents La Muralla (The Wall); two works which put forward questions of moral demands with a background which provokes serious arguments, since according to a survey made public in Spain at that time, for every 225 inhabitants, one dedicated his or her life to the Church.

It has been a long time since he hung up his cloak, but in 1954, the bullfighter, Antonio Borrero Chamaco triumphs in Barcelona as too does the Catalan, Joaquim Bernadó. On the sports scene, Federico Martín Bahamontes is the king of the mountain in the Tour de France; in cinema Federico Fellini is top of the ratings, triumphing with La Strada (The Street) and the first International Film Festival is celebrated in Sant Sebastian.

Despite the fact that, in Spain more attention is paid to the christening of Francisco Franco Martínez-Bordiu, first grandchild of the head of state and for whom it was necessary to change the order of his surnames so as not to lose the lineage of the Generalísimo, the election of Josep Tarradellas as President of the Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalan Government) in exile has much more transcendence even though it was still powerless and had no way of telling what the future held. This election which took place at the Embassy of the Spanish Republic in Mexico, declared to be Catalan territory, means that the Catalan free-will is still evident in the wish to recover its rights and liberties, despite the fact that those in power, back in the homeland continued to say that the past would never repeat itself.

When Mariona Millà is born, in Havana they are celebrating the Second Hispano-American Biannual Art Show and the early medals for painting are for Francisco Cossio, Pedro Bueno and Joan Baptistas Porcar; the first prize for painting is for Godofredo Ortega Muñoz; for Sculpture it is Josep Clarà and the one for the complete work of an artist is for Joaquim Sunyer.

The most talked about art exhibitions in Barcelona are Maria Sanmartí’s, mother of Antoni Clavé at the Gaspar Gallery and also Gonzalo Lindin’s at Jaimes Selections Gallery. The poet J.V.Foix has just given a conference entitled “Considerations on Current Art and Literature” at the Artistic Circle of Sant Lluc, introduced by its president, Joaquim Renart.

The day in which Mariona Millà is born, the theatrical offerings in Barcelona are quite poor. The cinema box office hits are Lily in technicolour and wide-screen, at the then Windsor Palace Cinema, on Diagonal Avenue; From Here to Eternity, starring Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift at the Fantasio and Paris cinemas and Bread, love and Fantasy starring Vittorio de Sica and Gina Lollobrigida at the Cristina and the Astoria cinemas.

The Early years

 The Fifties were years of gradual economic improvement in Spain and especially in Catalonia, where there began to be work for everybody, wages were low but a growing wave of immigrants from other Spanish regions without the same industrial growth as Catalonia, lead Barcelona and its area, to experience a notable and progressive growth in population. 

The creation of the Association for Drama in Barcelona (ADB) in 1954 which introduced works, translated into Catalan, such as The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and The Visit of the Old Lady by Dürrenmatt, are examples of how the, up until then, oppressively fearful climate was beginning to change. The sky was still clouded over by an intense grey, but now and then little cracks of sunlight were beginning to appear.

Whilst Mariona Millà is a child, as too are her brothers and sisters, – Elisabeth the eldest, born in 1952 currently philosopher and teacher; Lluís, who, as I have said, was born in 1957 and continues the family bookselling business; Marta the youngest, born in 1963 and an actress- what I have earlier described as “cracks” of sunlight, become more and more frequent and some of them even start to increase in size. At home and during the regular meetings for informal discussion of a particular issue of common interest at the Millà bookshop, Mariona hears talk of the evident desire that the dictatorship, obsessed with continuing and succeeding itself, will end by breaking up and falling apart completely. Even though it was still difficult for her to understand it all, she slowly becomes more and more aware of events such as the first free assembly of students at the University of Barcelona (1957); of the removal of Luis de Galinsoga (1959), prepotent director of the newspaper La Vanguardia for his insults towards Catalonia; of the setting up of the publishing house, Edicions 62 (1962) which would publish books such as Nosaltes els valencians (We the Valencians) by Joan Fuster and Els altres catalans (The other Catalans) by Francesc Candel; of the Manifest (1963) of a group of prominent Catalan public figures who each wrote in person to the Vice-presidency of the Spanish government to request full rights for the Catalan language; of the opening of the Picasso Museum (1963) and the comments made in that same year by Aureli M. Escarré, abbot of the Montserrat Monastery in a the French newspaper, Le Monde saying that “ the Spanish régime calls itself Christian, but it does not obey the basic principles of Christianity.”

 

Contrasts between the neighbourhoods of Horta and the Raval

Lluís Millà and Miracle Salinas, Mariona Millà’s parents were married in 1951 and went to live in a villa on Pedrell Street in the neighbourhood of Horta. They lived there with the four children they successively had and only moved on to a flat in Albert Llanas Street in the Carmel neighbourhood many years later when their children had grown up and left home and urban speculation forced them to make the move.

Mariona and her brothers and sisters grew up between the neighbourhoods of Horta and Guinardó as in this nearby neighbourhood, they went to school. In the Fifties and Sixties, these neighbourhoods of Barcelona were, apart from being healthier, especially quiet. The Millà family as other neighbours, were renting in a small villa of two floors with a little vegetable garden which they cultivated themselves, and which supplied them with fresh fruit and vegetables. The surrounding land was extensive and the views were very agreeable.

The environment of Horta and Guinardó where Mariona Millà very happily grew up, contrasted greatly with the neighbourhood of the Raval where the little girl went with her mother and her brothers and sisters to visit their Grandparents and to collect her father from work so they could all travel home together. From an early age, when she is not aware of what the Barri Xino (Chinese Quarter) means, and later on as a teenager she is surprised by the colourful atmosphere to be found in streets such as Saint Paul’s Street, which was also refined and peaceful thanks to the the two buildings at its start and finish: at its entrance you can find the Liceu Opera House and at its exit, the Romanesque church of Saint Paul in the fields.

During the Twenties and Thirties of the Twentieth Century, Barcelona accumulated a notable selection of cabarets, pick-up bars and brothels all to be found in the Raval neighbourhood. It was at this time when the journalist, Francisco Madrid and author of the novel, Blood in Atarazanas, would popularise the name of the “barrio chino” (“Chinese Quarter”) for this area, probably influenced by an American film which dealt with the mysteries of the chinese quarter of Chicago. The name would stick and writers such as Josep M. de Sucre, Marina de Castarlenas, Rafael Duyos and Pedro Luis de Gálvez, amongst others, would use it in their poems dedicated to the neighbourhood.

The age old trade of prostitution had been practised in the area for many, many years and Saint Paul’s Street facilitated access to many other streets which at certain hours of the evening and night became a hive of activity with men coming and going from the different establishments dedicated to the sex business. A business which surprisingly would become grow and grow, despite the signing of an International agreement by Spain in 1957 which attempted to eradicate female prostitution. With the brothels closed, women would start to openly trade in the street, they would also open pick-up bars and what euphemistically could be called “needs of the flesh”, would become more and more visible. For Mariona Millà it was a strange situation, at the furthermost extreme from her own family life, but as a child and teenager, it would give her a vision, which years later, would appear in her artistic work. She, Mariona Millà, was courageous enough at that time to make us aware of it in as cruel a way as the sex business itself in order to bear witness and also to provoke a healthy and comprehensible reaction.

 

Training at the Massana School of Art and Design

 

Already as a child, Mariona Millà found the best way to express herself was through painting. A child who scribbles on the blackboard at school or on the first piece of paper they have to hand is nothing new. All of us do it, have done it and will do it. And when we don’t have the material we need to hand, there are always some children who can make do with a stump of charcoal – nowadays they use aerosols – to scribble on the walls, or a stick to draw in the sand. The reasoning behind this is that by expressing what we feel, we achieve results in communication, although the way we take, even if started upon as a game, becomes rockier and more difficult as it opens up before us.

The latter is Mariona Millà’s case, as a small child she always wanted to draw. She enjoyed it and did it well. The best thing one could do for her was to leave her to spread out the bits of paper her father brought her and let her draw in peace. Lluís Millà, who had spent some time at the Massana School and had assisted in the illumination of some books belonging to the book-collector, Joan Vila (“D’Ivori”) as well as his own, did not stand in her way and taught her a few basics. As well as this and by chance, at Guinardó Park school where they went, there was a drawing teacher who helped her to improve. His name was Mr. Gubianes, who died not long ago, the only male teacher in a staff of women. This was surprising given the time in which schools, both public and private still followed the rule that there had to be a difference between the sexes, be it between pupils or staff.

The means which Mariona Millà had at her disposal for drawing really were quite poor. Her father let her have odd papers which came from second hand books and half-filled exercise books which came into his possession through the purchases he made at the bookshop. However, she didn’t mind, since her main interest was in painting the landscapes and the people who surrounded her. There were pictures hanging on the walls at home and also at her Grandparents’; oils and sketches by artists who visited the bookshop or which – like the papers on which Mariona Millà expresses her own incipient personality – were bought along with a pile of books. Some of their authors were well known on the Barcelona artistic scene and others less so, but on the whole, they were very useful to her, allowing her to feel a part of the environment which she would like to belong to.

As well as the pictures, there were also one or two small sculptures in the family home and Mariona Millà tried to model them by mixing water and soil from the garden. The satisfaction she felt whilst she created her improvised works of art, was very agreeable, but she was devasted when the following day, she found that the dirt had dried and her efforts had turned to dust.

She needed to learn techniques and when she was still very small, every time she went past the old Hospital of the Holy Cross with her parents, which was now home to the Massana School, she told them she wanted to go there as a pupil. She was not old enough however and she had to wait until her fifteenth birthday when she was able to take the entrance examination.

Mariona Millà spent five years at the Massana. She attended classes and participated in various workshops. Her teachers were Francesca Ribas, Gassó, Domingo, Muntasell, Gerard Sala, Noé i Macià; she benefited greatly from the classes even though she preferred two teachers in particular due to the cordiality with which they accepted her longing for learning: Ismael Balanyà and Josep Brunet. Both teachers knew the Millà bookshop and furthermore, Balanyà had been a fellow student of her father’s. Mariona would never use this relationship for her own benefit and only if asked would she mention it. (Later on, when she studied at the School for Performing Arts and only then, once she had been accepted, did she explain her relationship with this teacher when asked by her teacher there, Jordi Coca. Then – as always – she wanted to be accepted for who she was and what she was able to do.

 

The Six plus Six group

 For Mariona Millà, student at the Massana School, the days seemed not to have enough hours for her to draw, paint, etch and experiment as she would wish. This is why, after class, she would go to do life-drawing at the “Circle of Saint Lluc” and on public holidays, she would draw faces and silhouettes of people she saw around her neighbourhood, and also she would paint landscapes, still-life and flowers. She tried everything, as she had the increased need to capture reality and gain security by using all sorts of techniques.

Her early painting and especially her drawing followed, as would be expected, established guidelines. She is especially fond of the work of Isidre Nonell, and, as had happened to other artists – remember, for example, Joaquim Biosca - , she Nonell-ises things! Of course she has no intention of imitating the painter of gypsies and the neighbourhood of Peking, but by nature, she is drawn to the poverty and the figures of those men and women, whom society considers to be on the edge. They are, without knowing it, like a premonition of what she would do later on, consciously and much more radically.

She had barely reached twenty when Mariona Millà joined an artistic group, set up with fellow students at the Massana School. There were twelve of them – six young women and six young men – and it didn’t take them long to come up with a name for the group: “Six plus Six”. The general idea was to get known but without any kind of idealogical manifesto which would establish an aesthetically innovating doctrine. They were new and keen to highlight the importance of their artistic anxieties.

The “Six” female painters were made up by Maite Batalla, Ángels Fisa, Maria Teresa Ibàñez, Rosa Larrey, Magda Martí and Mariona Millà, whilst the “six” male painters were Francesc Barrachina, Joan Cot, Germà Díaz, Víctor José Leiva, Eugeni Llopart and Salvador Massana Saburit. The latter, son of the painter from Vilanova, Salvador Massana, gave the group of novices, their first exhibiting space, a gallery in Vilanova i la Geltrú, whilst, thanks to the fact that the journalist, Pablo Vila San Juan was a regular visitor to the Millà bookshop, they managed to get La Vanguardia newspaper, to which he contributed, to publish an appraising qualification about the first experience of Six plus Six. The journalist underlined the fact that as well as showing promise as a future artist, Mariona Millà in her three oils and six sculptures, offered us realities of great hope. Kind, but also fair, since if he had not realised that the novice artist, harboured so much creativity, then he would have written a less convincing review.

The exhibition of the group in Vilanova took place in April, 1974 and within a year, Mariona Millà was exhibiting again in public. This time she was on her own in a gallery in Barcelona by the name of Ninots, recently opened in Manila Street. Six plus Six were still together, but were growing further and further apart, as so often happens with the majority of artistic groups, although still maintaining the initial friendships between its components, they come to realise that there is hardly any similarity between them all as for creative approaches and each of them decide to go their own separate way.

At Ninots gallery, Mariona Millà presented a total of thirty-one works amongst them oils, watercolours, pastel and pencil drawings. Pablo Vila San Juan, by then an enthusiastic chronicler, dedicated an ample text to her in the section of art news in La Vanguardia newspaper. I will save myself from reproducing the whole text, since it is to be found in the part reserved for comments and critiques at the back of this edition, but I think that, in terms of its contents and praise of Mariona Millà’s work and attitude, it must be read more as an attack on aesthetic forms of which she was not at all in favour, rather than a stimulus for the then very young painter to find her own true aesthetic way. Therefore, when he considered that that first exhibition was “a pleasant and hopeful manifestation in such serene, cultured and ready youth”, he did it so he could say it was “fortunately far removed from any exaggeration which the so-called “impressionists” have us used to, that, in my understanding, is a far cry from the true and divine art of painting”. And when he wrote that the young painter “offers the visitor the gift of a magnificent explosion of honestly triumphant youth”, he pointed out that he did it “without the necessity to use depressing and fictitious extravagances and hallucinations” and concluded that “it was worth seeing the exhibition and even more so, leaving it with the thought that youth such as that was what was needed by this poor humanity”.

By no means do I want to get stuck in a time warp – the text which I am dealing with is now more than quarter of a century old – and pour out somebody else’s words – an always pleasant and polite gentleman, whom I had the pleasure to meet and who passed away many years ago. However, since Mariona Millà is an artist, who has always thanked those who wrote about her work and respects all opinions, by reproducing the article, I felt that it was a way of outlining the attitude of a part of Catalan sociey at a time when she started to become known as a painter. Both Picasso and Miró had left their mark on a worldwide level; the modernising efforts of Ramon Rogent and of the Maillol Circle had become set examples; the impact of Dau al Set and the ever increasingly important figure of Antoni Tàpies were indiscutible yet obligatory references; the freedom to create had seemingly been established, but from what we have read, there were still some, I suppose with good intentions, who demonstrated against the impressionists. And I am not referring to the masters Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley, amongst others, rather, probably, the Catalan painters who were exhibiting at the Parés gallery and who, during the season of 1974-1975 had been, amongst others, Jordi Curós, Manuel Capdevila, Josep Puigdengolas, Pere Pruna, Miquel Villà, Joan Josep Tharrats, Julián Grau Santos, Bosco Martí, Darius Vilàs, Josep Amat, Emili Grau Sala, Simó Busom, Francesc Serra and Rafael Bataller. Some of them, unfortunately, are now dead, but the majority are still alive and continue to be active, much to the satisfaction of a wide audience who visit their exhibitions.

Mariona Millà, logically, did not want to compete with painters who at that time had been successful in creating a following and exhibited regularly. Neither did she want to be known for a certain style, be it what it may. According to the saying “I paint and that’s it!” of her admired Isidre Nonell, she wished to show what she did and experiment to see if it was enough for her to work fully as an artist, which was what she liked the most. She was grateful for Pablo Vila San Juan’s praises of her work, but by no means did they cause her to give up the search for her true way of painting.

Since Mariona Millà could by no means limit herself purely to sculpture, which although it was hers in use, it still did not demonstrate everything which she felt within herself. Her mother, when she was small and they were together in the allotment adjoining the villa, had taught her how a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. It was a metamorphosis which everyone has to undertake at a certain point in their life if they ever want to be true to themselves. It was the change, the transformation which a true artist undertakes due to necessity when he realises that all that he has learnt is no use to him even if he has adapted it to his own needs. But in order to achieve it, he needs time, obstinately following his own process of internal freedom.

 

Five Years of  Investigation

Following her first, solo exhibition, Mariona Millà found that all the paths started on during her studies were interesting, in fact fascinating, but she had to think carefully about what she really wanted to do. She felt the need to structure her work and work on various aspects in order to achieve results which went further than conventional solutions that were generally accepted.

She was working more for herself than for others. She was fascinated by faces and the bodies of old people, street scenes and theatrical respresentations. In these three aspects, she searched to find herself: the truth about social life, the reasons for which we do some things and not others, the way in which people have to deal with situations out of their control. And perhaps because she knew it best, she demonstrated a certain preference for theatrical things in her sculptures: figurines, curtains, posters and scenes from the plays attracted her for their fiction which opened up feelings in the form of passion. She wanted to connect with the stimula in its most spontaneous state, free of any limitation or tradition or social rule which social circumstances usually established for general acceptance.

Five years were dedicated to investigation until, at the beginning of the Eighties, Mariona Millà sharpened her own sensitivity and prepared to express herself in a singularly personal way. During this half a decade and for some time later – I would say until around 1983, since it is from this year, that she exhibited regularly – she grew in a humane way at the same time as she prepared herself to feel sure of what she wanted to express. She used techniques to free herself from the subordination of the rules when these tied her down and she learned to feel free to interpret what most affected her own need to explain her environment.

 

From Theatrical themes to Human passions

Mariona Millà’s pictorical presence seen in the exhibitions she held during the Eighties was clearly influenced by the theatre. In 1985 at the Syra Gallery, she exhibited various works under the title of Stage – A Sculptural vision of the theatre; the following year she exhibited at the Subex under the title From Rehearsal to Opening Night, and at the Palau Güell, to conmemorate seventy-five years of the School of Performing Arts, in 1988 she presented Details of Catalan Theatre. These were her most important exhibitions in Barcelona and she seems to have specialised in theatrical themes with great success, and which, of course, she would never give up,. But there is another theme which draws her with much more force: the Chinese Quarter, the one where men and women live from the passion of sex at its most degrading and lowest level. And she broke out with this subject in May of 1989 at the Cartoon Gallery, a gallery which at that time was to be found in the middle of the Eixample neighbourhood in Barcelona more precisely on Provença Street, near to the crossing with Balmes Street.

Carles Castellanos, her teacher, wrote in the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition, that “only a woman, a woman aware of her own condition, could reflect reality in such a way” and pointed out that those works “between the darkness and the night of the present open up life to the light of hope”. I agree with him and in the critical appraisal I published in the newspaper El Periódico about the exhibition, I say that Mariona Millà portrayed “people in different stages of moral degradation, from prostitutes to retired people of the lower classes”, but that she “treat(ed) them with love as humanity can still be found within each and every one of them”.

The painter and all those of us who have followed her work, are aware that the subjects chosen provoke reactions of incomprehension and rejection amongst some people. And people belonging to a certain social class and economic standing with habits which could be described as middle class are not the only ones to be shocked; so too are some of the models, kidnapped from reality, who feel themselves to have been humiliated. In my own article, I also think the same and after having reccommended a visit to the exhibition, I suggest that the visitors should leave their prejudices at the door as they go in as there will be plenty of time later to pick them up at the exit. Some people had no trouble at all as they were free spirits; others followed my advice whilst others didn’t go, or already shocked by it all, went to air their views to the owners of the gallery. And worst still: since some of those pictures or ones very similar were shown later on in different places, the reaction was more or less similar. In fact in a town in France, the organizers refused to hang some of Mariona Millà’s work because they found them to be too visually explicit.

With bright colours and an intensity of thickness of paint, Mariona Millà delved into the hell that existed in the human mind and in the organisation of society. To a certain extent, she was like a medieval stonemason, who carved the sins of the flesh high up on the capitols of the cloisters of Romanesque monasteries to keep the monks pure. Or the cabinet-makers who carved similar figures at the backs of the seats in the choir of the cathedral, where the canons leaned whilst praising God in gregorian chants. Her work did not praise vice, rather it obeyed an aim to denounce, not fallen people, but a society which had allowed such things to exist.

Mariona Millà’s aim was artistic and she did not attempt to teach a moral lesson. It pained her, as it did anyone with principles to see what was happening, but she wanted to go further, to get to the bottom of the situation in order to understand how a human being could transform himself into a denial of himself and take on a different form completely. Marginalisation created rules and within the world of prostitution, there were some codes of conduct which were hardly ever broken.

The painter got to know her female models, spoke to them, was interested in their situation and tried to get them not to see her as a stranger, but as someone, who wanted to understand them. During an interview about this subject, Mariona Millà explained the following about the contacts she made, saying in advance her aims as a painter: “I opened (the conversation) very humbly, first of all as a person and they started to warm to me quite quickly because I don’t hide what I am and what’s more, I don’t beat about the bush; I don’t put up any wall between myself and my subject. And they, for their part, don’t have the usual cynicism of “normal” people; they are frank, and above all, they show themselves to be proud because they don’t try to hide what they are.”

The power of this work can be found, I think, not in the singularity of the subject, but the way in which it is understood as something normal within a social situation which would never have existed if we all were to act according to the rules we ourselves have laid down. Hypocracy makes society hide its wounds instead of trying to heal them. The theatre of life is, consequently, a lot falser than theatre itself and Mariona Millà shows this to the full with this work.

 

The Urban Animal and a city which holds us Hostage

 As one pictorical cycle ends, another one starts. The subjects never wear themselves out, but it is the artist who decides they have said enough in relation to what they wanted to express and flees from the danger of repeating oneself. But if the experience it leaves behind proves to be positive, then there is no break, rather continuity with a new motiviating interest. For this reason, Mariona Millà at the beginning of the Nineties, moved on to drawing and painting urban animals, those who, in a different environment than their original one, and orfans of the help which in theory Man has given them, are forced to prowl around in solitude in order to survive. Pigeons, rats and especially, feral cats, as well as dogs, who have been abandoned due to diverse circumstances and who have to find food where they can.

Basically, the painter has changed models, but still insists on exposing the Human lie, the indifference of society towards the weak, the cruelty which exists within social relationships. Because those who reflect this are not the domestic pets or the ones who are trained by man to be useful, and which could have been represented with an exemplifying irony, but the ones left to their own fate in a very hostile world.

The first exhibition with this new theme of urban animals was held by Mariona Millà in 1993 at a very apt venue: the Barcelona Zoological Museum. For the occasion, the eminent anthropologist, Jordi Sabater i Pi wrote an introduction to the exhibition catalogue in which he described how the artist “(had) subliminally interpreted by using colour and brush-strokes, the desperate, defeated and exaggerated gesture of an animal, worn down by the weight of the city, always impersonal with these abandoned creatures, distant, insensitive and cruel.” Words which, to a certain extent can be applied to marginalised and misunderstood people, the weak, who cannot defend themselves in a city which is suffocating them.

Thus, logically, Mariona Millà’s new subject matter, the one she has been working on since 1995, is the urban landscape in relation to the fears, worries and needs of such people.

Barcelona is the back-drop to her pictures, but her intentions go far beyond what the city is in terms of streets. Mariona Millà doesn’t want to paint an urban landscape just for its shapes –however pleasant they may seem - , rather it is for the influence it has on people. And even if her way of expressing herself has become friendlier, she never gives up showing that within the darkness of our souls the carlights still dazzle us and the traffic-lights are a kind of trap for those who believe in the security of rules.

Mariona Millà clearly believes whole-heartedly in what she does. On the acknowledgements page of one of her catalogues, she wrote: “I would like to toast a great love, that of painting. If it dies, I will die.”. It is this love, this intense love, which will always keep her alive, because it spurs her on to draw, paint, etch, create sculptures and jewellery, posters and teach by giving conferences and art classes. It is as if her spirit is feeding the flames of her art and we are the beneficiaries.

 

Josep M. Cadena

Per Mariona Millà - (2010-02-05)