The exhibition ‘Villèlia’s Promise’ is the first individual institutional exhibition in almost three decades. It kicks off with Homenaje a Blume (“Hommage to Blume”), from 1954, a work that belongs to our collection. It was a significant year as it was when he held his first individual exhibition at the Museum of Mataró and became friends with Joan Brossa. Although Villèlia did not frequent artistic circles, he was highly respected by his fellow artists. His work aroused the interest of major artists such as Miró and Ferrant. Just a few months before his death, the latter wrote a beautiful piece about Villèlia’s still young work, from which the title of the exhibition is taken.

Villèlia persevered in his use of ‘unproven’ materials. The meticulous carving of different kinds of wood, such as cherry, walnut, mahogany and yellow pine, was followed by the work on onion stalks or prickly pear fibres made an appearance, and giant canes were also used; he thereby consolidated the language that made him so well known, but not before he also worked with industrial materials such as steel wire. It is not easy to associate the materials with a specific chronology. He is generally placed in the field of the concentrated treatment of wood, to which he applied slight and precise areas of colour and which he assembled by means of threads or strings given his interest in typically sculptural notions, such as gravity and balance. He found his greatest fortune in the relationship between line and space, which he brought to a singular refinement, and in changing scale he showed commendable skill. Despite the prosaic nature of the material, as bamboo was already consolidated, he endowed his art with clamorous subtlety.