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Moisès Villèlia: The Fulfilment of Emptiness
Very close to Vallespir, beside the Montfalgars massif, lies Molló, a picturesque Pyrenean village with just over 200 inhabitants. Cradled on one side by the Rocabruna stream, which flows into the Fluvià River, the village is best known for the Romanesque Church of Santa Cecília, renowned for its five-storey square bell tower dating from 936.
The Villèlia family settled here permanently in 1972, after returning from their time in Quito. Drawn by the infinite horizon and the freedom to gaze beyond, they had decided long before returning to Catalonia to make their home in the Pyrenees. The house remains almost hidden until one reaches a bend in the road directly beneath it.
From the path leading to his home, Moisès Villèlia greets visitors with an outstretched hand, his figure merging – like a cinematic dissolve – with Gargallo’s Prophet or the John the Baptist evoked by Oscar Wilde in Salomé. His wind-tousled hair resembles clusters of grapes.
This rugged landscape of dry-stone terraces, so far removed from his familiar world of reeds, hints at the adventurous spirit of this unique man, a man who inhabits a world of his own.
His work does not belong to any established tradition, nor does it follow any artistic lineage. Before Villèlia, no one had ever used reeds to create sculpture. A self-taught artist, he came to visual expression through an inner need to convey his emotions and beliefs – his lifelong tension between materialism and idealism – and his conviction that empty space must be integrated with solid space to create a unified whole that gives meaning to human existence. Perhaps at first he was not fully conscious that this was the path he sought. Yet even before working with reeds, his early piece Tirabuixó (Corkscrew) reveals his interest in combining matter with emptiness – an aspect noted by Joan Brossa at the time.
The void. The void became the defining thread running through Villèlia’s entire body of work. The void. This theme has preoccupied thinkers across Eastern and Western traditions. Its denial of emptiness was a cornerstone of Aristotelian cosmology, which in turn gave rise to the medieval notion of nature’s fear of the void. The 14th-century Occamist critique of Aristotle rekindled atomist theories, which posited that the universe is composed of two principles: atoms – matter, being – and the void – space, nothingness. Yet as early as the 7th century BCE, Laozi not only accepted but celebrated the existence of emptiness:
“Between Heaven and Earth,
There seems to be a Bellows:
It is empty, and yet it is inexhaustible; The more it works,
the more comes out of it.
Thirty spokes share the hub of a wheel;
yet it is its centre
that makes it useful.
You can mould clay into a vessel;
yet, it is its emptiness
that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows from the walls
of a house;
but the ultimate use of the house
will depend on that part where nothing exists.
Therefore, something is shaped into what is;
but its usefulness comes from what is not.”
Moisès Villèlia met Michel Tapié at a young age, who introduced him to Zen, the Japanese form of the Chinese Buddhist school. The artist became deeply interested, recognising in it an explicit expression of his own thinking, which helped him channel his natural inclinations.
Zen rejects speculation, argumentation and theorising, focusing solely on inner enlightenment. Beyond intense meditation, its practice advocates a life dedicated to work. One manifestation of this philosophy is the principle of constant activity. Its spirit extends to various cultural expressions, such as the tea ceremony, flower arranging, gardening and martial arts. When Villèlia was told how strongly his reed sculptures evoke the gestures and attitudes of these practices, he readily admitted his interest and admiration for these disciplines.
Tension, torsion, rhythm, force, dynamism, stylisation, counterbalance, stability, balance and weightlessness.
Forms that evoke crossbows, arrows, spears, tools for working the land… An art based on the association of ideas, an endless chain of sensations and symbols.
The artist’s hands transform materials as simple as wire and sticks into something delicate and refined.
This exhibition traces the evolution of his work, beginning in Mataró in the 1950s, continuing in Cabrils, passing through Ecuador, and culminating in Molló. He starts with humble materials, repurposing waste materials – a practice that, over the years, would become associated with what is now known as Arte Povera.
A lack of resources never prevents him from working and experimenting ceaselessly. He shapes wood, wire, string and shavings until he discovers bamboo. The hollow interior of the canes provides the void he seeks, and without hesitation, he embraces the material. Xonta, bamboo, gàdua – hard yet elastic, unyielding materials that bend softly to hands that coax them with both tenderness and firmness. He begins to give them form, creating beautiful assemblages. He balances and counterbalances, achieving unexpected shapes of exceptional plastic beauty.
His profound reverence for nature leads him to adopt techniques as close to his own hands as possible. In search of an artistic outlet, he finds it in a material that comes pre-shaped by nature – needing only the subtlest infusion of beauty, applied in the simplest possible way. His process of abstraction becomes so refined that he ultimately dispenses with modelling altogether.
In Villèlia’s work, it is clear that artistic greatness is never dependent on quantity or the luxury of materials.
Roser Baró
