COSMOS & GROTTO - MADELEINE SPIERER

Guided visits in 2017, 2021, 2022 La Bisbal d´Empordà

Born in 1926 in Trieste, Madeleine belongs to a generation of artists who, despite having dedicated their entire lives to art, always acted on the margins of the art world due to the circumstances of the time. Her relationship with the artist Bram van Velde underlines this ambiguous position, very close to the nuclei of art but at the same time distant.

It was not until the nineties, already mature, when he began to exhibit, mainly in Geneva and Basel. Throughout her life, having grown up in Geneva (because of the Second World War), she travelled extensively to Paris, Madrid, Oslo and spent long periods in New York and El Salvador.

During 2013, at the age of 88, she decides to move to Catalonia to carry out a large and significant work in an appartment in La Bisbal. With the help of friends, assistants and collaborators she realizes the installation COSMOS & GRUTA in over 4 years, made entirely of paper and papier-mâché. Spierer's work has always explored the axis between the inner world and the outer world, a liminal space that she has been exploring since he was 12 years old, when she began to draw and paint. The installation conveys this delicate sensitivity to life and all that it entails.

After completing the work, her health begins to deteriorate and Madeleine stops living in the space of the work, but moves to a nearby flat. The installation is never completely finished. The work is often visited with her and there is always some detail to improve. The face of one of the 'friends' in the Grotto or a small alteration. The artist's eye is never lost.