To accompany the paintings of Concha Sampol
Carme Riera
SEE THE EXHIBITION
When Concha Sampol and I met, at the end of the sixties, she wanted to be a painter and I a writer, but neither of us had done more than dabblings, shown secretly only to our closest friends. Our vocations, however were clear and for nothing in this world would we have renounced them. That is why we had left Majorca and come to Barcelona, where Concha studied Fine Arts and i Letters. Probably, these artistic similarities motivated a mutual congeniality. On my part, I remember Concha as one of the most interesring and c1ever persons at the Residency where we lived. Her personality stood out over the future university students in general at a time of such barren convenrionalism that I believe the May in France passed them by. Concha, moreover, was, is, a very beautiful woman . Another trait that tmade her different.
Since I am a couple of years older, I left the Residency before Concha and lost sight of her. From time to time, though, someone would give me news of her. So I learned she had successfully exhibited in various galleries in Majorca, Barcelona and Girona. Only recently it was she who called me to asked if I would write a few lines of presentation for this catalogue, something which made me very happy, for her, first of all and for the gallery where she exhibits, secondly. That Joan Gaspar has discovered her work seems to me to bode well, and I am very pleased to be an implicated witness.
When Malevitch painted his well- known painting White on White, at the beginning of this century now ending, he began, possibly with out knowing it, a new abstract pictorial expression , open to different meanings, in the words of Umberto Eco, and which implied different significants, on fom continents.
The work of Concha Sampol has made me think of Malevitch and also, of course, of Eco, for the many interpretations we are capable of making. I believe what is important in art is suggestion, a requisite that the paintings by Concha more than fill. In the work of the Majorcan painter we often observe the passing from a planimetric plastic expression which, finally, becomes objective, volumetric. The balance of textures, tones of colour reinforce and beautify the lineal effect of the composition.
Concha Sampol proposes to us living works - which in some of her compositions she accetuates, using natural materials- disquieting and at the same time full of serenity, of elegance. The balance of volumes and of colours round out the aesthetic effect that these latest examples of Concha Sampol offer us.
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