Ceramicist Maria Bofill at Montserrat’s Museum

Espai d’art Pere Pruna, at Museu de Montserrat (MDM), houses –until June 24th- the exhibition Muntanyes de l’ànima (Soul Mountains), by ceramist Maria Bofill. Curated by Anna Pujadas, in this exhibition Maria Bofill (Barcelona, 1937) focuses on the mountain, keeping always in mind Montserrat’s mountain: her life’s mountain, since it is in her country, it is part of her landscape, so it is her soul mountain.

Bofill offers ceramics mountains, sometimes literally, miniatures of mountains in china or stoneware; sometimes they gather the sense of the mountains, only by means of other shapes –like capitals or clouds-. ‘Maria Bofill’s soul mountains are meant to contain our spirits, to shelter and feed them along our life journey. They are not meant to be contemplated or handled, but to be inhabited, to be wandered, not with our feet but with the imagination’ says Anna Pujadas, director of school Eina. For the mounting of Montserrat’s exhibition she has benefitted from the collaboration of an interior designers’ crew. This will make Bofill’s essential work shine. Bofill’s works are arquetypical in comparison with ceramics as a human activity. Bofill’s career as a ceramist is ‘a research of ceramics’ archetype. According to Pujadas, to achieve this she has had to virtuously improve her technique and, at the same time, discharge herself of this.

Maria Bofill (Barcelona, 1937) studied in school Massana, where she worked as a teacher from 1965 to 2002. She has a long experience in exhibitions worldwide, and research stays in the main international ceramic research centres. She has been a teacher and researcher at the Sunderland Polytechnic of Art and Design (Sunderland, England), Kyoto City University of Arts (Kyoto, Japan), Universidad Veracruzana de Xalapa (Veracruz, Mexico), Hartwick College of Oneonta (New York), Triennale de la Porcelaine (Nyon, Switzerland), University of Haifa (Israel), European Ceramics Work Centre (Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands), Atelier de Céramique Artistique Méditerranéenne (Hammamet, Tunisia), International Ceramics Simposium of Siklos (Hungary), among others. She has been awarded in various competitions, and her work is part of many prestigious art collections.