Moisés Villèlia

MOISÉS VILLÈLIA (Barcelona, 1928 - 1994).
Untitled.
Polychrome bamboo cane.
Measurements: 86 x 65 x 20 cm.
Moisés Sanmarón Puig, whose artistic name was Villèlia, was a sculptor linked to the abstract movement, who initially identified with the artistic concerns of the Dau al Set group. He learned wood carving in the workshop of his father, a renowned craftsman, and during his childhood he received a rationalist education, which was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War. After the war, his family moved from Barcelona to Mataró. He exhibited his work for the first time in 1949 at the Museum of Mataró. Four years later, after working with his father on the woodwork for the chapel of Santa Ana in the city, he decided to devote himself fully to sculpture. With a scholarship from the Institut Français in Barcelona, he moved to Paris in 1967. In the French capital he worked with perforated paper as the main material for his works. Two years later he went to Argentina, where his brother, also a sculptor, lived, and finally settled in Quito, where he remained until 1972. On returning to Spain, he moved to the village of Molló, in Girona, where he devoted himself to making surrealist sculptures in which he used willow wood and assemblages of objects, giving his works from this period a certain sense of humour. He died in 1994, and in 1999 the IVAM in Valencia devoted an extensive retrospective exhibition to him. He is currently represented at the MACBA in Barcelona, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Patio Herreriano in Valladolid.