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Positive balance of visitors at the 61st Girona Drawing and Painting Fair
The event, organized by the Fundació Llibreria Les Voltes, brought together around ninety exhibitors and maintained the spirit of making art accessible to the public.
This past All Saints' Sunday, the 61st edition of the Girona Drawing and Painting Fair, organized by the Fundació Llibreria Les Voltes, closed with a very notable influx of people in the streets of the center and the Old Quarter of Girona.
According to estimates from the organization itself, the event usually attracts more than 12,000 visitors per edition, a figure that this year was boosted by the good weather and the festive atmosphere of the last day of the Girona Fairs and Festivals.
This edition of the fair has occupied Plaça del Vi, the Pont de Pedra ascent, Rambla de la Llibertat and Plaça de Catalunya, from 9 am to 8 pm. This year, around ninety exhibitors have participated, bringing drawings, paintings, watercolors and other pieces to display and sell directly to the public.
Throughout yesterday, residents and visitors were able to stroll among the stalls and chat with the artists, in a format that maintains the spirit with which the fair was born in 1965: bringing art to the streets and putting creators and citizens in contact. For its part, the Fundació Llibreria Les Voltes has calculated that, throughout its history, the exhibition has exhibited more than 265,000 works.
Enric Colldecarrera, guest artist
This year's guest artist was the Olot painter Enric Colldecarrera (Olot, 1961), specialized in abstract expressionism. After training in various art schools, he resumed painting with a personal search influenced by abstract expressionism, especially by Jackson Pollock.
In his work, color, gesture and matter are protagonists. Through techniques such as dripping, superpositions and direct action on the canvas, Colldecarrera explores intuition and creative freedom. In his works, often of large dimensions, color becomes an expressive force that invites the viewer to a personal interpretation.
This past November 1st in the morning, Colldecarrera painted live in front of the public in Plaça del Vi. Colldecarrera, who has been participating in the fair for 18 years, highlighted the large number of people who gather there and described it as "one of the best fairs in Catalonia."
II Feliu Matamala Award: a commitment to the Catalan language and culture
This year will be the second edition of the Feliu Matamala Award, instituted by the Board of Trustees of the Fundació Llibreria Les Voltes to recognize people and entities that have stood out for their career in defense of the Catalan language, culture and nation. It is worth noting that, in the first edition, the award distinguished Josep Guardiola for his career and his commitment to the country.
As a novelty, this second edition will incorporate the Les Voltes Foundation Award, intended to recognize a person or an emerging initiative that stands out for their work in defending and promoting the Catalan language and culture. With this new distinction, the Foundation wants to recognize not only consolidated trajectories, but also new projects and people who, from different fields, contribute to keeping Catalan culture alive and guaranteeing its future.
The Feliu Matamala Award is named after one of the promoters of the Les Voltes bookstore, founded in 1963, and a prominent figure in the cultural resistance in Girona during the Franco regime.
As for the awards ceremony, it will take place on December 4, at seven in the afternoon, at the Josep Irla Auditorium. The celebration aims to be an opportunity to publicly recognize the work of people and initiatives that work for the language and culture of the country, as well as to claim the importance of continuing this commitment and encouraging new generations.
Chair of Architecture and Theory of the Human Body at the University of Girona (CATCH)
It is worth noting that the Chair of Architecture and Theory of the Human Body of the University of Girona (CATCH) and the Fundació Llibreria Les Voltes will begin a new stage of collaboration through an agreement to promote research, dissemination and creation projects that connect art, architecture, education and the human body. The Girona Drawing and Painting Fair, as a space for artistic creation and exchange, has been an ideal framework to announce this agreement.
It should be remembered that this connection was already visible in the previous edition of the fair, with an intervention in Plaça del Vi by Pep Admetlla and Dr. Joan San, which put art, thought and public space into dialogue. The agreement aims to continue this experience with new initiatives that bring research and creation closer to citizens and encourage exchange between artists, researchers and the public.
The Drawing and Painting Fair coincided with other traditional fairs, such as the All Saints' Day Fair-Market of Antique Dealers and Antique Dealers of Girona, which was held this past Sunday, November 1st, in the Sant Feliu Square, from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. This event was organized by the Sant Feliu Neighborhood and Merchants Association.
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