BARCELONA, 1973 Mònica Castanys
It manages to reflect an always desirable citizen harmony. And it does it with the representation of simple and daily acts, in which the female figure establishes the balanced rhythm of the scene.
It captures urban environments – street scenes and, especially, open-air bar terraces – with a strong impregnation of human reflection.
MÓNICA CASTANYS, PAINTER WITH POSITIVE SENSE OF OBSERVATION
by Josep M. Cadena
Mònica Castanys, granddaughter of the popular and kind graphic humorist Valentí Castanys, has inherited a great capacity for observation from her grandfather and has managed to give her an excellent pictorial sense. It not only captures urban environments – street scenes and, especially outdoor bar terraces – but also knows how to give them a strong impregnation of human reflection. It accepts what it sees and reproduces it naturally in the way people produce it, but it also transmits the dynamics of light and through it leads us to think about what our society is like.
The painter manages to reflect an always desirable citizen harmony. And it does so with the representation of everyday and simple acts, in which the female figure – almost always presented in profile or back, as if it were alien to her protagonism – establishes the balanced rhythm of the scene that Mónica Castanys represents not so much what is in itself as what it can suggest as a norm of life. This occurs in the exterior, where the strong light of the first planes is well contrasted with the gradation of those who follow, as in the interiors full of pleasant intimacies.
