Artistic Refuge in a Catalonia Church

As a child, the Barcelona-born painter Santi Moix often made weekend trips with his father to Saurí, a remote Catalan village of 16 people perched high in the Pyrenees. Now, at 57, Moix is perhaps the closest thing Saurí has to a local celebrity, having built a career exhibiting work at the Brooklyn Museum and Milan’s M77 Gallery, and at Prada’s SoHo store (a 2013 commission) featuring his abstract, hypersaturated flora and fauna murals.

Five years ago, the local government and bishop asked if the artist might come and paint the interior of St. Victor, the village’s 1,100-year-old Romanesque church, whose plain stone walls had become dull and decrepit over time. Moix, who isn’t religious, was reluctant. Finally, after many months of negotiations, he agreed — but only if he’d be granted full artistic license, free from conceptual obligations to church or state. “I was clear that I would not paint saints or martyrs,” he says.

What he ended up producing is his largest piece to date, some 1,200 square feet of frescoes that cover most of the church, which he describes as a “huge garden full of fantasy.” 

_____________________

From “In Catalonia, a Church Becomes a Place of Artistic Pilgrimage” by Katie Chang for the New York Times T Magazine. Photo by Ricardo Labougle. 

_____________________

#art #artist #catalonia #spain #santimoix #painting #fresco #church #sauri #pyrenees #travel #story #stories #thestorybar #brooklyn #prada