A Visit to L'Escala

left to right..Lluis Duran, Lluis Roura and Martin Bradley

My host, friend, and mentor in everything Catalonia, hotelier Señor Lluis Duran, was most insistent that I visit with his bon amic, an artist and yet another Lluís, Lluís Roura Juanola. I was in Figueres for a short break from seeing exhibitions in Lombardy, Italy. I had a tight schedule which began and ended with catching up with Spanish friends, eating copious amounts of tapes (Catalan Tapas) and spending time with my extended family, the Durans. Eventually, after much persuasive persistence on Señor Duran’s behalf, I surrendered, letting him drive me in his ageing Audi through Catalonia’s charming Province of Girona to the antique fishing town of L'Escala.

It has been written that L’Escala, a municipality of Alt Empordà, in Girona, is acknowledged for two things, the ancient (Greco-Roman) ruins known as Empúries, and as a small fishing town producing the salty small fish we call anchovies and Catalans call seitons (which some say are simply the best and mentioned by Francisco Zamora in his "Diary of journeys in Catalonia”, 1700s). To this, admittedly short, list I add a third - Lluís Roura Juanola, or Lluís Roura as he prefers. It is said that Catalan artist Lluís Roura Juanola came into this world on a rainy day, at dusk, on the 5th of December, 1943. He arrived in San Miguel de Campmajor, in the province of Girona, Spain. Roura’s birth was premature, complicated. In that dire situation one Dr. Verdaguer took water and baptised the child, believing as he did so that the new born had not long to live. Roura, however, survived.

Señor Duran drove me past the early Summer countryside, past petrol stations also selling wine,  past the turnoff to Roses and the roundabout where Roura’s mosaic (executed by Armand Olive in 2001) stands, along near the coastal waters of L’Escala (the scale), around and up to Roura’s magnificent multi-tired house overlooking the bay. In front of that traditionally white-painted house, in the Spanish tradition, stood an antique olive tree, still bearing fruit. Being elevated, and being by the bay, a welcome breeze cooled us as the sun was beginning its slide towards the horizon. As it did Roura, a keen photographer, whisked out his camera and began to take photographs of us, not to forget the brush of the sun’s dying rays across the scant clouds and calm waters. I turned, startled to see a stork perched on the roof, gazing too at the sun setting. Roura gave a chuckle. The bird was transfixed not by the sunset, but by its fixtures to the roof. It was a very real statuette. Many, it seems, had been caught by Roura’s little jest, including me.

Since his first art block drawings, back in the very different Spain of 1958, Roura has, over the decades, dedicated himself to the Catalan environment which has nurtured him for so many years. As a boy, taking the very first artistic steps into what was to become his amazing career, in 1960 Roura had won second prize in his first art competition then, later, in the same year, a first prize in another. Through the decades he has gone on to win awards, and amazing accolades for work which has brought him to the fore of Catalonian artists, and honoured by the town in which he now lives. Roura’s paintings have always had the sense of ‘giving back’, enriching the region which has become a constant subject for many of his larger scale works. L'Alt Empordà inspired Roura to paint and have published a weighty tome of his paintings about that region, including El pas de la tramuntana (1987) which captures the sombreness of the wind which can cause madness, and Geologia Cap de Creus (1986) echoing both Salvador Dali, whose home was nearby, and his friend Antoni Pixot, both of whom had been inspired by that most especial Catalan nature reserve.

Roura engaged his visitors with an honestly smiling personality which projected his joie de vivre and good naturedness. His greatness has come through his painting the immediate environment, and later his photography. As we traversed the various layers of his seaside home, travelling towards his voluminous penthouse studio, we were led through his art gallery where huge, joyous, paintings acted like windows into colourful worlds. Worlds drenched by Mediterranean sun, warm, practically exotic or picturesquely static, frozen, frostily white but nevertheless dreamy Catalonian landscapes like Tapissat de neu, Tapis (2006) or La nevada La Vajol (2006) awaited our gaze. One impressive landscape caught my eye (La Tardor - Autumn, one of The Four Season series, 1987). It was a stunningly fiery landscape in autumnal colours.  A furious dance of reds swirled to their own gypsy tune with vermillion, red-orange, hot yellows drifting back to calmer pink shades dotted with practically staid green trees edging the eye to the horizon. Blue/grey with swathes of yellow swept into the practically placid sky. It was a flamenco tour-de-force worthy of Turner’s Sunset Over a Lake (1840).

We stepped up and into Lluís Roura’s studio. Dominating the room was a most impressive picture window looking out to the town, revealing the extremely scenic Bay of Roses, and its setting sun. Artistic paraphernalia were strewn across Roura’s stupendously large atelier penthouse. It was obvious that that generosity of space also doubled as an office as desks and a computer shared the space with easels, tripods and tables laden with paint-filled palettes, brushes and paint tubes in various stages of use and, of course, paintings. One easel mounted, ready primed, blank canvas and all the references the artist requires for that new work stood awaiting the artists hand.

As if by prior arrangement, the outside sun began to grace the sky with gold. Roura grabbed another camera and dashed outside, encouraging us to do the same. He has taken thousands of photographs from his rooftop terrace, capturing myriad sunrises and sunsets and everything in-between. Looking at the spectacular celestial display one could understand why. Colour changes were so rapid that the human eye could barely catch them, but a camera lens can.

Lluís Roura’s expansive painting of the Holy Land, titled The Landscape of Jesus’s Baptism, executed between 2010 and 2011, resides in the chapel of the baptistery Sant Pere de Figueres, in Figueres town, near the Dali Museum.