Antoni Llena
Fine artist
Mini Miracle
Our daily life is full of little miracles which are the fruit of faith and hopeful anticipation. One of these miracles happens, half hidden, every summer in Catalonia. It is the sheaf of more than 600 artists from around the world attracted by the Mini Print of graphic art that Mercedes Barberá has been promoting and organizing for the past 27 years in her Cadaqués gallery.
The idea of participating with a work no larger than 10 x 10 centimeters is in itself brilliant. First, because there is nobody with artistic inquietude who would not dare to make a print whose production cost is accessible even for the most destitute artist. Second, because nobody could regret acquiring a work whose price and size is within reach of all purses and all habitable spaces, a work whose very condition pleads imperatively to be collected.
In favor of the limited dimension there is also a weighty question: it is a size that does not permit the artist to construct rhetorical discourses within a space that only allows a show of intimacy. In this sense not only is the 10 x10 Mini Print a brilliant idea but also a combative one. Of course it could be said that art is never a democratic proposition and that it is not fair that all artists must work within the limits of the same square, but the fact that this is established as the only rule of the game, is what, in compensation, permits so many artists from all over to physically contrast their talent. It is because there are rules that there is a game, or because these are respected that democracy functions.
To bring artistic energies to the surface, diffuse them, graft them, contrast them and catalog them is an act of love toward the undiscovered sensibilities that swarm throughout the world. But it is also an act of fidelity to a received legacy, an act of love redoubled, a miracle.
Mercedes Barberà Rusiñol
Director of the Mini Print International of Cadaques
If there is anything that we can remark about the 27th Mini Print International of Cadaqués it is the participating artists’ continual visits to the Taller Galeria Fort during this summer. Artists from Canada, the United States, Japan, Serbia, Slovenia, Scotland, England, Switzerland, Germany, Australia, Russia, Portugal and Israel have traveled from their distant lands to visit the exhibition, showing their enthusiasm for the high level of works by the 654 artists from 52 countries as well as for the beauty of the village of Cadaqués that receives them.
The solo shows of last year’s winners arouse great interest from the collectors, graphic artists and the numerous public who visit the gallery. This summer Maja Poljak (Serbia), Juan Canals (Spain), Célia Bragança (Portugal), Danielle Creenaune (Australia) and Roland Schaller (Germany) were present and acted as jurors of the current exhibition. The artist Tanya Azarova (Russia) was unable to attend for reasons beyond her control. We regret her absence. The visits of the winning artists are always an occasion for the interchange of technical and cultural knowledge leaving behind an enthusiastic and amicable souvenir.
For the second time, during the months of August, September and half of October, Ian Chance, the director of Farleys Yard Trust, a cultural center created by Antony Penrose, presented the Mini Print in the center’s beautiful gallery which attracts personalities of the British cultural world as well as other visitors who participate in the cultural events organized in the center, among which the Mini Print is one of the most attractive.
The gallery L’Etangd’Art of Bages (France) showed the Mini Print from the end of November until the middle of January 2008. Sophie Cassard, its director who, for many years has had ties to Cadaqués, transmits her enthusiasm for the Mini Print to the visitors and to the many participating artists who also come to her active and competent gallery. The Fundació Tharrats d’Art Gràfic of Pineda de Mar (Barcelona) showed the Mini Print during the month of October and hopes to repeat this every year. Personally, this is a decision for which I am especially grateful because the artist Joan Josep Tharrats was a friend and participant in the Mini Print while he was alive.
We are grateful to the Entitat Autònoma de Difusió Cultural of the Catalan government and to the Ministerio de Cultura of the Spanish government for their economic aid and their interest in the Mini Print. Without their comprehension the Mini Print would not exist.
Its continuity results from the presence of the beautiful works of the participating artists whose investigation of new techniques and modes of expression contribute to the necessary evolution of printmaking. We again hope for the presence, not only of the most faithful, but also of those who discover the Mini Print for the first time. We are on our way towards the 28th edition. So be it!