Permanent collection. Carte Blanche for Jean Marie del Moral. Processes 1978-2018

“The studio is the self-portrait of the painter or sculptor; it is also the site of the metamorphosis. Here, the works are begun, amidst doubts and quests “

Jean Marie del Moral

In 2018, it will be forty years since Jean Marie del Moral started researching the relationship between artists and their place of creation, the atelier or studio where the creative act, the intellectual expression, takes place, an expression that executes works within the confines of walls that comprise an enclosure conducive to creation. Looking on others through oneself makes us understand the event and the moment. At Es Baluard, this photographer of Catalan descent who lived in France since he was a child but is now an inhabitant of Mallorca, and whose career has developed on the international stage, presents an enlightening dialogue between creator and creation space. Through photographs of different painters, portraits or series of photographs of creative actions, Del Moral establishes a connection between his photographs and the original works, most of which belong to the museum’s collection, and as a result we are made aware of some unique moments regarding some of the lines of the histories of art.

Born in France (Montoire, 1952), the son of exiled Spaniards, Jean Marie del Moral began his career as a photographer in France in the ‘seventies, working as a photojournalist for the communist daily L’Humanité. He was 21 years old and had been educated with a strong social sentiment; he portrayed moments of upheaval, social protests, miners’ strikes and workers’ movements.

After covering the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, and working in New York and Toronto, and while still a photojournalist, Jean Marie del Moral coincided with Joan Miró in Barcelona after years of dictatorship. An hour and a half in the Miró universe, at the painter’s studio, was enough to change his course, steering him towards new perceptions, those evoked in us by artists and their ateliers, mental spaces, the forge of creation and its process.

Back in Paris, he started contacting artists and many of them opened up their studios to him over the years, turning his photographic archive into a great encyclopaedia of images showing the course of painting from the last quarter of the twentieth century up to the present.

The works of Jean Marie del Moral have been published by the most prestigious international magazines. In 1987 he inaugurated his first individual exhibition and in 1988 was present at Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie d’Arles, also with an own exhibition. In 2004, on the occasion of the publication of his book Barceló, fotografías de Jean Marie del Moral (Thames and Hudson, Steidl, Actes Sud, La Fabrica) in four countries, he exhibited his works in the IVAM-Institut Valencià d’Art Modern (València), the Centro Cultural Conde Duque (Madrid), the Museo da Cidade (Lisboa), the Fundación Antonio Pérez and several foundations in Spain. He has also written and directed two documentaries: Picasso y la tauromaquia (1993) and Los estudios de Barceló (1991).