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» SOUVENIR
OF LIFE:
The Legacy of Guillermo Pérez Villalta
Date: July 12,
2013 - January 12, 2014
Place: Monumental Area and Prior Gallery
Curator: Óscar Alonso Molina
Exhibition Session: Beyond Figura
Since the earliest days of his career, which began over
forty years ago, the Cádiz-born artist Guillermo Pérez Villalta
(Tarifa, 1948) has made a habit of setting aside for himself some
of the most significant pieces from every exhibition, either because
of their sentimental value or because he considered them important
milestones in his professional life. The result of this practice,
aside from a studio littered with his accumulated output-not uncommon
among artists who have been working for so long-is that Villalta
has become his own greatest collector, possessing the most comprehensive
and illuminating collection of his work currently in existence.
This magnificent anthology will comprise the artist's generous bequest.
Souvenir of Life is the public presentation of part of that bequest, which will give visitors an idea of the importance of Pérez Villalta's contribution to art over the decades while also opening a window onto aspects of his private life, vital clues that allow us to appreciate the true scope of his particular poetics.
Thus, in the monumental setting of La Cartuja, visual arts (paintings, drawings and sculptures), architecture and applied arts (textiles, jewellery, pottery and decorative tiles, props and set designs), archives, documents and personal belongings strike up a conversation with the historical buildings of the old monastery, a dialogue charged with intentionality. This particular exhibition layout was chosen to reflect how Pérez Villalta's artwork, when dissociated from the specific places that witnessed its birth and shaped its destiny (particularly the artist's family home in Tarifa and the Strait of Gibraltar, but also Seville and a certain side of Madrid), takes on new layers of meaning.
