AURÈLIA MUÑOZ, Infinite Researches. Fibres, Texture and Space

AURÈLIA MUÑOZ WORK

Aurèlia Muñoz discovered the act of creating with textile fibers and materials by a path completely different from that of many other creators. As a general rule, the artists of the second generation of innovators (Abackanowicz, Buic, Grau-Garriga, etc) are painters or sculptors who saw in tapestry a new expressive world with physical and tactile qualities that painting or sculpture could never provide. Muñoz came to art by way of drawing and through the tradition and craft of weaving. Her interest in — even love of — these very rich and ancient traditions, which unfortunately were falling into disuse and neglect, enabled her to see them as perfect tools for her personal and artistic development. The challenge for her was to use techniques associated with traditional craft processes, which once updated would be the perfect tools for contemporary artistic creation and, with results of the first order, would become a call to conserve what without this public exhibition would end up being lost.

Her early experiments with textiles, after producing her first printed fabrics, were with patchwork. This technique caused her language to become increasingly abstract. The limitations of the medium, together with her research in history and theory, duly led her to embroidery.

Embroidery, unlike other techniques, gave her total freedom, with no limitations of machinery or form. The stitches could go wherever she wanted and how she wanted on the surface of the base fabric.

Her expertise was self-taught. First, she undertook a historical and artistic study of the technique — of note here being her fervent admiration for the Tapestry of Creation in the Cathedral of Girona — and then, by closely observing actual works, went on to teach herself the practical skills, with the aid of many foreign books.

The first embroideries are, in aesthetic terms, heirs of the geometrism of patchwork, gradually evolving into freer and more organic compositions. It was with one of these geometric works, Abstract Construction (Construcció abstracta), that Aurèlia Muñoz took part for the first time in the International Biennial of Tapestry in Lausanne. Among the tapestries, hers was the only work that had not been made on a high-warp loom, which in addition to the colors, composition, texture, and monumental scale of the embroidery caused it to stand out from the rest.

Her participation in the Lausanne biennials allowed her to find out what was being done in Europe and America, and subsequently in Japan too, in the discipline of contemporary textile art. The biennials served as a forum for the exchange of ideas and mutual influences among artists working with textile fibers, spontaneously giving rise to the international movement that André Kuenzi was to dub Nouvelle patisserie, where the common link was the vindication of tapestry and textile art as a medium for contemporary creation, which resulted in the conquest of space by these creative talents. Aurèlia Muñoz played an active part in this international movement, though her earliest three-dimensional works date from a few years later.

Drawing was a basic tool in her creative process. Her studio still contains a great number of drawings — drawings that in the mid-60s began to be filled with new characters. With their organic roots and surrealist premises, fantastical, playful, and relaxed, from the paper they passed to the surface of the embroideries; Totem (Tòtem) and Fountain of Eternal Life (Font de la vida eterna) are outstanding examples. In Cosmic Angel (Àngel còsmic), the lone personage is presented as the sole protagonist, while in the aforementioned pieces, the figures are accompanied by fictive architectures, like stage sets, which are complemented by the first volumetric additions to the surface of the pieces.

She began to be interested in the concepts of space and volume, first as embroidered fictive expressions or small volumes, which with her new technical research into textile collages were to become small sculptures.

Collage was already well established as an experimental creative tool, but Aurèlia Muñoz concentrated it on her textile cutouts. These were not just any old bits of material. In many cases, they were pieces of antique clothing, especially religious vestments, and among them, we can find passementerie, pieces of raincapes, brocades, and damasks that would not be out of place in a museum collection, used by her as fragments with history to create new stories and characters.

The first works of this kind are murals but they already hint at the influence of the theatre and stage design on the artist’s creative approach. These are characters fashioned from pieces of textile, which are located in fictional spaces framed by the kaleidoscopic effect of frames with mirrors. The design of the costumes for the stage production of The Rose and the Ring (La rosa i l’anell) caused the handling of her works to evolve. The figures spring from the plane surface and become small volumetric personages, small-format sculptures in which fabric, mirrors, and shiny surfaces constantly create new visual perspectives.