Badalona promises to look for a public place to set up a sculpture by Joan Pedragosa
DIARI DE TERRASSA
13-05-2004
Félix Riaza
«We are what we are, plus what we choose.» Beta Albuixech, partner of Joan Pedragosa (1930-2005), used a phrase of the artist himself to express what she felt during the presentation of the exhibition opened Wednesday afternoon with sculptures by her companion. This is the artist’s first show in his home town and what stands out in it is his least known facet, his work as a sculptor.
Pedragosa was trained in the field of design, which was his principal career, but he had always wanted to take the ideas of his sketches into three dimensions. His death last summer brought an end to a project planned for the Badalona Town Council; the creation of a sculpture for the city’s seafront. Wednesday afternoon both the mayor of the city, Maite Arqué, and the councillor for Culture, Josep Duran, affirmed their intention to look for an ideal spot in the city to install a piece by Pedragosa. Duran confessed that he felt a «bitter-sweet sensation» at not having made the artist’s desire a reality during his life. It is still not decided if one of Pedragosa’s large-scale sculptures will be used or one of his smaller pieces will be reproduced. While the town council and the family of the designer and sculptor decide on details as to where to place the sculpture, Badalona citizens can enjoy a representative show of the different facets of the artist, chiefly of his work on geometry expressed in sculpture.
«Espais sense límits» («unlimited spaces») reviews the figure of Pedragosa from his beginnings in design and features his posters done as a designer, his cut-outs, mobiles, the travel sculptures –that the artist took on his trips to distant points of the planet such as Alaska and Tierra del Fuego– and the large sculptures featured at the entrance to the museum.