DELUXE PERSONALITY
ART INSTEAD OF SHARES PRINCE VON SAYN-WITTGENSTEIN ON CONTEMPORARY COLLECTIONS FROM ERNST FUCHS TO DUCKBURG
ut of all the Mirós, Fusters and Barcelós, who even though they did not stem from Mallorca, certainly fell under its spell, Josep Coll i Bardolet (19122007) counts perhaps as its most genuinely indigenous artist. His sensitive landscapes in delicate pastels, often as watercolours, in gouache and occasionally as etchings, reflect his particular devotion to the Island and its landscape, and to its characteristic light which continues to attract our contemporaries. Josep Coll i Bardolet was born in Campdevànol (Catalonia) and brought up in Vic, and as an Impressionist and painter of the
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Island he left behind him more than just his tribute to the visual arts. In 1964, this graduate of the Art Schools in Tous (France) and Brussels – like many of his compatriots Coll i Bardolet fled abroad during the Spanish Civil War – established the series of classical open-air concerts held in the Torrent de Pareis, a gorge on the north coast of Mallorca. The artist had set up home here in 1940, five years before his famous colleague and companion Joan Miró. In the narrow streets around the Carthusian monastery of Valldemossa and in the terraced landscape of this pilgrimage site to Chopin, this bearer of the Catalan Order of St George and Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Couronne de Belgique found the muse and the motifs for his
work, which in good time he bequeathed to be used for the common good. In 2005, the Fundaciò Cultural Coll Bardolet was founded in Valldemossa, sponsored by the Balearic Islands Government, the Valldemossa Town Council and the Council of Mallorca. Coll i Bardolet only lived for a short time longer after its opening, two years later. Yet despite all the recognition and public support he received, his work is not well known outside Catalonia. In 2003, Coll i Bardolet’s ‘Valldemossa’ made 15,000 euros at auction. In 2007, a few months after his death, the ‘Olive Harvest’ changed hands at the Balclis auction house in Barcelona for an unexpected 30,000 euros.