Taking the brush, facing the blank page, choosing a color, daring with the first stroke. Starting to paint is not a trivial act; it involves making a set of decisions that contribute to increasing autonomy and self-esteem in the face of the value of work done with effort. Taking advantage of this power of art, the Josep Santacreu Foundation promotes the Art Singular program, which aims to empower people with intellectual functional diversity or mental health problems.
Through the program, users delve into the world of plastic art in workshops taught by social entities distributed throughout the territory. The Josep Santacreu Foundation, promoted by the current president of the Barcelona Chamber, Josep Santacreu, facilitates the launch of new workshops, supports existing ones, and takes its activity beyond creation: it also focuses on the dissemination of their works, in order to highlight their value.
With this objective, it has taken them to museums, facilities, offices, and even chocolate bars: 16 artists from its workshops designed the illustrations for the packaging of the Casa Dalmases Foundation's chocolate three years ago. And now, the works of artists participating in the workshops are exhibited at the Museu de Montserrat, with the exhibition Ulls, nas i boca. The exhibition, curated by Carles Guerra and open until May 25, brings together a hundred works by 24 people, and aims to break labels. "When people see the works, they don't see people with disabilities, but people with great creative capacity," claims the program's director, Eva Calatayud.
In addition to the current exhibition in Montserrat, works from the workshops are the protagonists on the walls of spaces such as offices, the residence for the elderly in Guissona, with 240 pieces, and even in Barcelona's municipal orchards. Through a project with the Municipal Institute for People with Disabilities, drawings by program participants serve to inspire the decoration of the pots made by Ceramics students from the Industrial School: "The goal is to fill urban orchards with singular art."
With the aim of highlighting the work of artists, the foundation has also taken them to offices that have chosen to adorn their walls with their paintings. "We prepare small collections of original pieces tailored for offices, which can be both abstract and figurative art," highlights Calatayud. "It's a way of bringing art closer, moving it away from elitism, and offering high plastic quality, through selections of works made with professionals from the art sector, such as gallerists and collectors," emphasizes the program director.
This quality of the works championed by Calatayud reflects the benefits that the program represents for its participants: it can increase their autonomy, self-esteem, security, communicative capacity, and social life. And, of course, their creativity: "The fact that it is a totally free activity, unlike others that are more directed, is very positive." Thus, the creativity of the workshop participants "transfers to a world of free spontaneous expression, with a creative impulse from which unfiltered emotions emanate," according to Calatayud.
Together with Josep Santacreu, she founded the entity in memory of her father, Josep Santacreu Esteve, a year after his death, in 2018. Within the Josep Santacreu Foundation, the seed that led to the Art Singular program germinated fortuitously. An employee with multiple sclerosis from Santacreu's company showed some oil paintings to Calatayud, due to her facet as an art collector. Calatayud not only liked the works, but also the members of the foundation's board of trustees, who bought them all.
As a result of this experience, they proposed to enable a space to exhibit works by artists with disabilities. "Little by little, the project began to grow," and Calatayud decided to focus the initiative on artists with intellectual functional diversity: "I am interested in the singular gaze of a person who thinks or sees reality in a diverse way."
Now, the foundation aims to continue growing, and aspires to do so with a Singular Art center in Barcelona. In parallel, Calatayud has another aspiration: to overcome the fiscal obstacles that make it difficult for artists to get paid for selling their works, which are sold at prices of up to 200 euros. "When a disabled person receives public aid, they have limitations and can practically not receive money; if they exceed a maximum, they lose the aid," highlights the director of the foundation, who sets as a long-term goal to work to change the taxation of people with disabilities.
Given this context, currently the money from the sale of a work is transferred to the workshop in which the artist of the sold piece participates. Thus, the circle closes: participants create, exhibit or sell their works, and what is collected is invested in the workshops so that they can continue creating, in a process in which users gain recognition, skills and self-esteem, as Calatayud summarizes: "Our commitment is that any person with mental illness or functional diversity in Catalonia has not only the right to create, but also to disseminate their work and be recognized within the art world."