Jesús Carles de Vilallonga

The fourth child of Salvador de Vilallonga i Corominas and Maria Dolors Rosell i Planes de Farners, Jesús Carles Isidre de Vilallonga i Rosell was born on March 10, 1927. His father was a wealthy landowner whose family documents, now deposited in the Arxiu Comarcal de la Selva, date back to the 13th century[7]. His parents were patrons of the arts and often had artists vacation at their summer home, the 15th-century family estate Mas Parés located in the village of Sant Martí Sapresa. At the age of five, Vilallonga made his first drawings there alongside the Catalan impressionist painter Joaquim Mir.

The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) shattered the family's bucolic lifestyle.[8] When Vilallonga was eleven years old, his father, Salvador de Vilallonga, who had been in hiding during much of the war, first in a secret part of the house, then later in artist's studio in Barcelona, was killed when he tried to cross over to France through the Pyrenees. Maria Dolors, with her eight children, left Santa Coloma de Farners and relocated to an apartment in Girona[9].

Ikara, mixed media sculpture, 2008

In 1948, Vilallonga moved to Barcelona where he studied drawing along with Joan Ponç at Ramón Rogent’s studio and took architecture classes at the University of Barcelona. Convinced that he wanted to dedicate his life to being an artist, he continued to exhibit and win prizes for his watercolor paintings, painted frescos in two different chapels, designed murals and mosaics for a large hotel on the Mediterranean coast, and studied painting with Marcel Gromaire at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He traveled throughout Europe, stopping in Rome to visit his friend the painter Jaume Muxart, and finally ended up in Copenhagen, selling his recently painted watercolors in the squares of major cities along the way to pay his expenses.

Barco de la vida, 1984

In 1954, he accepted a mural commission in Montréal and that move proved decisive to his art career[10]. To cover his expenses, he had the ingenious idea of painting watercolors of the wealthy homes in Westmount and selling the paintings to their owners. He sang and played the guitar in clubs, designed the costumes and set designs for a ballet at the National Ballet of Canada, and briefly taught Spanish at the Université de Montréal.

In 1958, Vilallonga signed an exclusive contract with Max Stern, owner of the prestigious Dominion Gallery in Montréal, who was responsible for introducing the contemporary European artists Henry Moore, Marino Marini, Van Dongen and Picabia in Canada [11]. His early paintings were in oil in an expressionistic style, alongside his trademark egg tempera paintings on board. Vilallonga’s contract with the gallery continued for thirty years until the death of Stern.

Vilallonga married his first wife, a Canadian widow with two young daughters, in 1959 and they had two more daughters. Vilallonga continued to paint prolifically while dividing his time between Cadaqués, Montréal, and Barcelona. In 1982, Vilallonga met Katherine Slusher, an American writer and art historian living in Barcelona. They were married in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec in 1989.

In 1992, they spent a year in Syracuse, New York, where Vilallonga studied sculpture under Rodger Mack and produced several bronze and aluminum sculptures at the Syracuse University foundry. The couple returned to Barcelona where Vilallonga worked for the next twenty years at his two studios in the Raval and became integrated in the social milieu of the Ramblas. The last five years of his life, he worked on large scale drawings at their home, until his death in 2018.[12]

Circus II, 1983

Jesús Carles de Vilallonga’s paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings are the subject of numerous books and documentaries and are in museums, universities, and private collections throughout the world[13]. His extensive body of work has been exhibited in individual exhibitions at the Lefevre Gallery in London, Sagittarius Gallery in New York, Galería Juana Mordó in Madrid, Art Contemporain in Paris, Dau al Set in Barcelona, and multiple galleries in Canada. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza in California in 2000 [14], the Parisian Laundry in Montréal in 2006 [15], and the Museu Casa de la Paraula in Spain in 2015 [13]. The Université de Montréal[16] and Concordia University [17] house large public works by Vilallonga.

Dream of a Dream, 1975

All of the documentation on Vilallonga's long and prolific career - exhibition catalogs, brochures, press reviews, magazine articles, publications, and over 3,000 photographs of his work - are available for consultation at the Arxiu in Santa Coloma de Farners.[18]

Dancers II, 1994

• Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Canada
• Musée d’Art Contemporain, Montréal
• Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, France
• Museo Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo, Madrid, Spain
• Université de Montréal
• Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec[19]
• Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona
• Syracuse University Art Collection, New York
• University of Toronto Art Center, Toronto
• Bibliothèque Nationale du Canada, Ottawa
• Fundació La Caixa, Col.lecció Testimoni, Barcelona
• Musée de l’Université de Sherbrooke, Québec
• Château Saint Fargeau, Yonne, France
• Richards Gallery, Northeastern University, Boston
• Art Gallery of Hamilton, Canada
• Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Canada
• Edmonton Art Gallery, Canada
• Palau Fontana d’Or, Girona, Spain
• Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Canada
• Museu de Cadaqués, Spain
• Concordia University, Montréal
• Bronfman Collection, Montréal

Portraits, 1985-2001

Caball blu intens, 1980

Cloister of Dreams, metal book sculpture, 1993

• Jesús de Vilallonga, Drawings, Symbols and Signs, Museu Casa de la Paraula, Santa Coloma de Farners, 2015 ISBN 8460686329 ISBN 978-8460686323
• Vull Inventar Jesús Vilallonga, Ajuntament de Santa Coloma de Farners, 2015 ISBN 8460691276 ISBN 978-8460691273
• Vilallonga , Parisian Laundry, Montréal, Québec, 2006
• Livre D' Heures, Vilallonga, Jesús de, Editions Leméac, Montréal, 2005 ISBN 2760932680 ISBN 978-2760932685
• Le regard des mots, Vigneault, Gilles et Vilallonga,J.C. de, Ed. Broquet, Montréal, Québec, 2005 ISBN 2-89000-683-2
• Vilallonga: Poetic Symbolism from Barcelona, Thousand Oaks, California, 2000ISBN 0-9700887-0-1.
• Vilallonga: Les lieux du rêve / Cloister of Dreams, De Moura Sobral, Luís Editions Broquet (bilingual edition), Montréal, 1993 ISBN 2890003728 ISBN 978-2890003729
• J.C. Vilallonga: Poet of Inner Vision, Spicer, Malcolm Editorial Juventud, Barcelona, 1978
• Vilallonga, Descharnes, Robert Editorial Juventud (French and English editions), Barcelona, 1971

• Documentary, series Carte Blanche-Portraits culturels, Vilallonga artiste peintre, Radio-Quebec Television, 56 min., 1995 CVE - Jesús Carles de Vilallonga — artiste peintre
• Jesús Carles de Vilallonga - Fondre l'art, Radio-Quebec Television, 28 min., 1997 CVE - Jesús Carles de Vilallonga — Fondre l'art