Catalan Vessels

Last October, I  spent almost a month at the Art Print Residence, outside of Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain. 

At that time there was a lot of political activism regarding the secession of Catalonia from the rest of the country.  Catalonian flags hung on every building. There were protests, strikes and at the end battles in the center of Barcelona between the police and the protesters that set a pace of almost of a state of emergency. 

I could not stay indifferent to the general state of upheaval, yet I was there to print my woodcuts, images of  bowls and vessels, domestic elements that have little to do with politics. I realized that although I was in sunny Spain working in a great studio surrounded by a garden, a small piece of paradise, instead of using color that reflected the joi de vivre, I was working on compositions using black ink on black paper.

I was wandering why and then I realized that it was my impression of Spain, through the memory of Federico Garcia Lorca’s last play: The house of Bernarda Alba. 

It has been written at the eve of Spanish Civil war in 1936 and is a metaphor of oppressive government. The widow Bernarda Alba is running a very tight household, adhering to her strict rules without taking in consideration the desires and needs of her daughters, creating tension that culminates in tragedy.