Pilar Perdices: The Surviving Stroke

"I, in my paintings, always tell my life story. I paint guided by my feelings, and all the symbols and elements in each work respond to a very specific purpose." At 91 years old, painter Pilar Perdices is perhaps the last survivor of an informalism and abstract expressionism that, in the artist's eyes, places Tàpies as her greatest master. "I feel like his spiritual student," she asserts, as she approaches the bar early in the morning, orders a croissant and a coffee with milk and, if something is to play in the background, asks for Tchaikovsky, whose compositions have accompanied her in the creation of so many works.

Born in Maó to a military father, and with her childhood spent between Menorca and Zaragoza, she moved to Barcelona right after the war ended. Here, as a young woman, her romance with painting began. "A first cousin of my mother was the wife of the owner of the Rigol fine arts store on Petritxol Street, where I started working as a cashier. I got to know many painters and ended up going out with them on Sundays, to the port, to paint landscapes. At the same time, I also painted objects from the gift shop next door. One day, the watercolorist Josep Barrenechea noticed what I was doing and, as he was a professor at the School of Arts and Crafts on Carme Street, he suggested I enroll; which I did. That's when I really realized that I liked to paint."

--- And from there you went to Fine Arts, right?

--- Oh, no, that happened much later, when I was already married to Carlos!

Carlos Sancho Bellido was an Aragonese aristocrat with whom Pilar crossed paths one afternoon at Pastís on Santa Mònica Street. "I used to frequent that bar a lot. It was a time when I let loose and lived the night to the fullest, and when I made friends with people like Tharrats, Marcel Martí, or Juan Antonio Comín. When I met Carlos, it was love at first sight. Marrying him is, along with having studied Fine Arts, what I am most proud of."

A light in the shadow

The artist began Fine Arts as a result of one of those coincidences that change the course of an entire existence. "That day I was accompanying a family friend from Zaragoza. He was the one who was supposed to enroll, but, once there, seeing all that, I signed up. My husband worked at La Vanguardia and I wasn't pregnant yet, which happened shortly after. I remember that, of the few girls there were in Fine Arts, I was the only one married and pregnant," she laughs.

--- So there were more girls.

--- There weren't many, but yes, the thing is we are not recognized. Look, the Catalan painters of my generation were Amèlia Riera, Maria Assumpció Raventós, Concha Ibáñez and I, and we are totally in the shadows. Notice that not even when Amèlia died, a few years ago, did anyone organize a retrospective for her. Nothing.

It is inevitable, in this sense, to think that MACBA itself has work by the parishioner in its collection, some pieces even to be restored, and that to date they have not contacted her. "It was a donation from Joan Brossa's widow when he died. She had treated my mother's cancer and my mother had told her about me, so one day she brought her some of my paintings and she took them to Brossa, with whom we became good friends. He supported me a lot, for example, dedicating a poem to me to accompany my first exhibition."

Meanwhile, Carlos was taken by cancer in 1969, "after ten years of happiness," shortly after, on his deathbed, he encouraged her to apply for a teaching position in Fine Arts. A very bitter pill that Pilar managed to overcome thanks to the affection of great friends "like Josep Oriol Esteve, for whom I have enormous affection and who has always been there."

Three cities in one

For the artist, there are three 'Barcelonas': the gray and anodyne one of a post-war childhood, that of a wild and nocturnal youth, and that of a maturity that has seen her grow as an artist and find great allies like Brossa or, to name another, Jordi Pujol himself. "I met him as a result of my time at the Taller Picasso in the Gothic Quarter, which at the time was very related to Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC). Pujol always asked me how I was doing and one day I told him that I couldn't exhibit anywhere. He sent his secretary to take my details and, after a while, I received a call from Conxita Oliver to set up an anthological exhibition for me that occupied the three floors of the Pia Almoina."

That exhibition catapulted the artist who, until mid-June, is exhibiting a retrospective at the LegaxArt gallery (Aragó, 331), and who assures that she is preparing a new exhibition "of work on paper, the only one I can work on now that I live with my daughter and no longer have a workshop at home to work on canvases or tapestries, as before, when I lived on Calle Pujadas."

--- What you have is a wide range of lunches or drinks to continue this morning in the Bar.

In Pilar Perdices' eyes, a light of years lived and vibrant memories of vivid colors, incapable of fading, lights up before she pronounces:

--- When I was young I used to order Cointreau or Pastís, but one is no longer of age, so I'm going to opt for a vermouth, ---brief silence. I really like vermouth!