Marta Palau. My Paths are Earthly

Think about the land, geography, the body. Weave a dialogue of techniques and materials that spin experiences and embody life. For the first time in Europe, the Museu Tàpies presents a major retrospective of the artist Marta Palau (Albesa, Lleida, 1934 – Mexico City, 2022), under the title My Paths are Earthly; it includes drawing, painting and some of her large textile installations, in dialogue with objects and materials from her personal archive, never previously exhibited.

The ensemble is presented as a network of bodies/works structured around two main axes that cohabit from their opposites: the idea of ​​land linked to exile and reception, understood as wound and scar, and the idea of ​​body, which embodies the migrant’s pain and loss, but also healing and the possibility of generating life. It is interesting to pay attention to how in Palau everything is filtered from her own biography, an experience that, furthermore, expands and remains valid through the conflicts that characterize our contemporaneity, as well as its possibilities for transformation.

The exhibition, in co-production with the MUAC (University Museum of Contemporary Art of the National Autonomous University of Mexico), will travel to the Mexican headquarters in autumn. The project constitutes the first major exhibition on an international scale after the death of the Catalan artist, who went into exile to Tijuana in 1941 as a result of the Franco dictatorship.

Although her relationship with textiles originates from contact with certain ancestral traditions of the American continent, her learning with Josep Grau-Garriga, a textile master who collaborated with Joan Miró and Antoni Tàpies, among others, will be decisive in delving into the tapestry technique. Throughout her career Palau developed several facets, which also include the creation of structures to support art and artists, and was highly recognized in some of the great artistic events in South America, such as the São Paulo Biennial or Havana Biennial, among many others.

[Photography by Enrique Bostelmann, Archivo Marta Palau. © Oswaldo Ruiz]