Josefa Tolrà (1880-1959), Pepeta, was a peasant from Cabrils, illiterate, who at the age of sixty began to draw and write as an antidote to the sadness she plunged into after the death of her son in a field of concentration during the Civil War (previously he had lost another, aged 14). “Only when I draw do I feel at peace”, he said. Coinciding in time, but many kilometers away, the Londoner Magde Gill (1882-1961) took refuge in drawing, embroidery and music to escape the pain and the feeling of disaster, trauma and adversity that caused her death of one of his sons due to the Spanish flu of 1918. A year later, his only daughter was stillborn.
Neither of them had the anxiety or the arrogance to call themselves artists. Nor did they ever think of commercializing their works. They were creative and visionary women. Mediums that in trance states reproduced the words or images dictated to them by beings from the beyond. Torlà and Gill did not meet, nor did they ever know of the other’s existence, but visiting La mà guiada, the fascinating exhibition that brings them together at the MNAC until November 5, it is not always easy to find out which of the two corresponds to each of the exhibited works. “They didn’t create with aesthetic or commercial intent, but both went to the essence and origin of art”, points out its curator, Pilar Bonet, historian and member of the pioneering group Visionary Women Art.
In less than a decade, the time since Bonet herself rescued it from oblivion in an exhibition in Mataró, Josefa Tolrà – who in her day captivated the artists of Dau al Set: Brossa, Cuixart, Tàpies – has went from being a great unknown to occupying its own space in the central exhibition of the last Venice Biennale and to be part of the collections of the Macba, the Prado or the Pompidou. And we can say the same about Magde Gill, whose work is about to enter the Tate’s collections. “But their recognition does not come so much from art historians, museums or academia… It is the public, especially the younger generations, who have brought these artists who emit pacifist messages and speak out from the surface of love, of care, of saving the planet… and they have learned everything from nature”, considers Bonet, for whom the two women practice a “secular, punk spirituality, which really fascinates young people”.
Josefa Tolrà said that she transmitted what the “beings of light” told her. He could barely speak Spanish, but in his notebooks he expressed himself perfectly in that language and wrote poetry. He had no academic training, but he was able to articulate speeches on history, science or philosophy. He never left Cabrils, only once he went to Badalona to visit a medium, but he talks about distant countries like Lebanon and paints the Congo jungle. In his drawings there are costume scenes, but also portraits of historical figures such as Marconi, Jacint Verdaguer and Napoleon.
Then, at the age of 14, she was sent to Canada to work as a domestic servant. When he returned he married his cousin, but the deaths of his children brought him even more anguish. He believed his talents were controlled by a supernatural spirit guide he called Myrninerest. His drawings, which like Pepeta’s show “what the eyes cannot see”, are the result of his determination to stay alive, to give meaning to all his suffering.
The result is wonderful and moving works, like everything that comes from another world, and at the MNAC they can be seen together in different theater rooms, as if they were domestic interiors, separated by translucent walls that evoke “an amniotic membrane”.
