Eudald Serra and the art of New Guinea Eudald Serra and the art of New Guinea Ricard Bru Eudald Serra, an avant-garde Catalan sculptor, was a key figure in Oceanic art-collecting in Spain in the second half of the twentieth century. His multiple stays and expeditions in the Pacific, together with his artistic eye, made him an indispensable figure in the building of the main collections of New Guinea art existing in Catalonia: his own personal collection, Albert Folchs’ private collection (Folch Foundation), and the public collection of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, the latter two being currently conserved and exhibited together in the Ethnological and World Cultures Museum of Barcelona. Eudald Serra-1968, New Guinea, Dopina village, Goaribari Island, Serra Estate #141 Serra felt a true passion for Papua New Guinea, its art, and its traditions, and this led him to travel to the country seven times throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As a result of this interest, multiple travel diaries and hundreds of photographs are preserved, as well as a significant number of the pieces acquired during the different expeditions. In his travels, Serra took daily notes of his experiences, notes that were used both to write the scripts for three films dedicated to the customs of New Guinea, and to document his experiences from an ethnologist’s perspective, through field work. However, the origins of this fascination with New Guinea arose much earlier, during his youthful years in Barcelona. Eudald Serra was born in Barcelona in 1911, and he began his artistic training in 1929 at the city’s School of Fine Arts, where he was a student of Ángel Ferrant, one of the most prominent and influential avant-garde sculptors in Spain in the first half of the twentieth century. Serra chose the path of the avant-garde, not only because of his proximity to Joan Miró, but especially because he was captivated by Ferrant’s teachings, which opened the doors of freedom for him as an artist, being able to work with languages other than those of the Academy. Thus, when Serra held his first exhibition in February 1934, critics highlighted some sculptures that already denoted a certain primitivism. At that time, Serra began to frequent the avant-garde group ADLAN, which in addition to promoting exhibitions by Miró, Dalí, Arp, and Man Ray, organized an exhibition entitled The art of today’s primitives in 1935, with pieces from Africa and Oceania from private collections such as those of Josep Maria Sert and Joan Miró. Thus, in the same way that in 1929 he was able to discover numerous pieces from New Guinea at the Barcelona Missionary Exhibition, we should not be surprised to find, among the books in his early library, the volume Les Arts Indigenes en Nouvelle Guinee (1930) by Stephen Chauvet. Eudald Serra 1970, Maprik, New Guinea, Serra Estate #165 Serra’s life, however, abruptly changed that summer of 1935, because, after he participated in the first exhibition of surrealist sculpture organized in Spain, he left for Japan without being aware that, due to the Spanish Civil War (1936–139) and World War II, his stay in the archipelago would last thirteen years, until 1948. In Japan, he continued to work as a sculptor while he delved into work as a ceramics artist and held numerous sculpture, pottery and drawing exhibitions. In addition, there he came into contact and became involved in a determined and passionate way with the movement for the recovery of popular Japanese art, around which the art of world cultures, including New Guinea, began to be discovered and disseminated. Eudald Serra returned to Barcelona in the summer of 1948, and from then on, he became one of the most prominent avant-garde sculptors in Spain during the fifties; he was a member of major artistic circles and obtained prestigious awards such as the Grand Prix of the Alexandria Biennale in 1958. It was then that he came into contact with August Panyella, the director of the Ethnological and Colonial Museum of Barcelona, created in 1949 to undertake expeditions with the initial intention of sculpting anthropological portraits of peoples of the world. After some first expeditions to Morocco between 1952 and 1956 with Panyella, Serra became an indispensable person for the constitution and growth of the new museum’s collections. In addition, Serra met the businessman Albert Folch, with whom in 1959 he organized a trip to the Pacific and with whom a few years later he helped create another great art collection. In this way, from the beginning of the 1960s, the relationship and coordination between Eudald Serra, Albert Folch, and August Panyella became intense and fruitful, and allowed both the future Folch Foundation and the Ethnological Museum to significantly increase their collections, through constant trips around the world. As a sign of this harmony, in May 1960, Albert Folch made his first donation to the Museum of 211 pieces of ethnology from New Guinea, the Celebes Islands, and the Moluccas. Eudald Serra 1968, Aedio village, Goaribari Island, New Guinea, Serra Estate #138 The first documented stay of Eudald Serra in New Guinea took place at the end of 1964 as part of a complex expedition, promoted by the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and by Albert Folch to collect artistic and ethnographic materials in Sri Lanka, Japan, Australia, and New Guinea. In this case and in the following expeditions, Serra was responsible for organizing the routes and visits to ensure that the objectives planned in advance were successful. To this end, he had the support of various Catholic missions established in Papua New Guinea, especially that of Father Xavier Vergés, a Catalan missionary established in Papua between 1948 and 1986. As a testimony of the intense bond that the artist established from then on with the Christian community of New Guinea, which gave him so much support to enter the island and get closer to its inhabitants, Serra modeled the bronze sculpture of Father Henry Verjus in 1984, in honor of the 100th year of the arrival of the first missionary on the island. From the very beginning, Father Vergés, established in the Inauaia mission, welcomed Serra and Folch on all the trips they made to the island, advised them, and provided them with contacts so that the New Guinea collection they intended to create was as interesting, valuable, and attractive as possible. Kikori River delta, Papuan Gulf- New Guinea, Serra Estate #178 Serra first arrived in Nueva Guinea on October 23, 1964, and after arriving in Port Moresby, he initially headed for Inauaia, from there exploring the jungle, mountain, and inland towns. In addition to being a tireless artist, Serra was an open and pleasant person, adventurous and restless, so whenever he traveled, he tried to meet the people of the country to learn from them. In the case of New Guinea, he modeled numerous portraits of the island’s inhabitants, but also tried to contact those people who could help him get to know the country, its culture, and its traditions. In addition to having the help of the Inauaia mission, he took a special interest in the Maprik and Sepik regions, coming into contact with other French and German missions, such as the Wewak and Marienberg missions. Thanks to this, throughout his first five weeks on the island, he managed to visit a significant number of towns to learn and document local traditions through notes, photographs, and filming. Likewise, the stay allowed him to gather a first notable set of ceremonial and ritual pieces purchased both directly in towns, as well as through missionaries or intermediaries. Complementing this first set of carvings, masks, paintings, and everyday objects, Serra modeled two anthropological portraits for the Ethnological Museum: a boy from Baimuru and another from the town of Viriolo. Back in Barcelona in February 1966, the avant-garde group Club 49, of which Serra was an active member, organized a screening at the College of Architects of Barcelona, the film Aspects of Ceylon, Australia and New Guinea, shot during the expedition by Serra, Folch, and his wife, Margarita Corachan. 1970 Maprik, New Guinea, Serra Estate #157 The experience on the island, as well as the excellent results both in New Guinea and Australia, encouraged Serra and the Folches to intensify their trips with the aim of continuing to document the island’s traditions and acquire new ethnographic pieces, for Folch and Serra and occasionally for the Museum. At the beginning of 1966, Serra requested a leave of absence as a teacher at the Barcelona School of Fine Arts to undertake the second campaign to Nueva Guinea. As on other occasions, Serra prepared the trip in advance, defining the route and organizing all the details, among which was obtaining permits and papers that would allow him to fully achieve his objectives. At the beginning of August, Manuel Fraga, Minister of Information and Tourism of Spain, personally wrote to the Consul General of Spain in Sydney informing him of the upcoming trip: On previous trips they acquired very important works with which an impressive exhibition has just been held in the Sala de Santa Catalina of the Ateneo de Madrid, of which I send you the catalog by separate mail. I would ask you, as you did on the occasion of their last expedition, to take care of them as much as possible and obtain the necessary authorizations from the Australian, English and French authorities so that they can carry out their interesting work in the best possible way. On this occasion, the stay lasted three months, between October 1966 and January 1967, all of it financed by Albert Folch. Their extensive route allowed an intense tour of the island, reaching inaccessible places by the hand of natives and companions, such as the missionary friend Vergés. As an example, Serra described in his personal diary the route to Oopo Hill conducted on October 21, 1966: At 9 we loaded our backpacks and cameras to go to Oopo Hill. We crossed the jungle with the tractor for an hour. Once arriving at a creek, we left the tractor and began to walk through the liana forest, then in the open with grass up to half our bodies. When it was time to walk we went along the foot of Oopo Hill, lunch on the banks of a stream, at noon we begin to climb. Halfway up the hill we come across several caves full of human bones. Until recently it served as a cemetery for a nearby town, they deposited the corpses without covering them. The sorcerers used to go in search of herbs and some animals that are found in that locality, remove certain parts of the corpses that later were used for their magic. Except for Fr. Verges and some other missionary, no white has gone up there, it is even taboo for most natives. 1966 Telefomin, New Guinea, Serra Estate #75 From the Inauaia region, Serra and Folch traveled by plane to the north of the island to visit the towns of Marpik and Sepik and there with the help of other missionaries such as Father Heinemans from the Wewak mission, they assembled another important group of pieces. In turn, Serra took the opportunity to model the portraits of three men from Aibom, Mount Hagen and Menyamya, one of them being Philip Yakura, author of several ceramic jars (sisben) preserved in the Ethnological Museum and in the Serra collection itself. These were months of intense work in which Serra continued to collect data and advice both from Heinemans and from other colleagues who were in the region. He also met Meinhard Schuster, who was in Ambunti working for the Basel Museum of Anthropology, and Roy D. Mackay, curator of the Port Moresby Museum, with whom Serra had long conversations, and they became friends. All these contacts became a source of information and advisory voices that helped him continue on the path to achieving the objectives of a scientific trip with experiences that were rewarded by a third campaign on the island after two years. Eudald Serra in Mt. Hagen, circa 1966, photo courtesy of Serra Estate. Albert Folch, this time jointly with August Panyella, promoted the organization of a third campaign of Eudald Serra in Nueva Guinea that took place between the months of August and October 1968. Again, Serra met with Xavier Vergés and with Roy D. Mackay, and, at the same time he had his first contact with art dealer Wayne Heathcote who, from Ambunti, supplied him with pieces and helped him process export permits for the works. From Madang to Wewak, from Maprik to the banks of the Sepik, and from Kerema to New Ireland, week after week Serra loaded new pieces, masks, sculptures, and all kinds of ritual and decorative objects that, as on previous occasions, were transported by jeep, tractor, boat, or plane, very often without thinking so much about the economic cost that all this entailed, but more about the opportunity that it represented: I have spent much more than expected, both for the Museum and for us. I hope I have done well. In this sense, the words that Father Vergés dedicated to him a few years later are significant: I always admired him for the effort and energy he lavished on his visits here, on his solitary journeys through such inaccessible and even dangerous places in Papua New Guinea; and the competence with which he evaluated the pieces he was collecting. The 1968 expedition had the collaboration of the Barcelona City Council, through the Ethnological Museum, to increase and enrich its collection of objects from New Guinea and to complement it with a last anthropological sculpture that Serra modeled on Kikori. Dancers, Inawaya village, circa 1966, photo courtesy of Serra Estate. Throughout the different expeditions, Serra turned the search for pieces and the discovery of cultures commissioned by Folch and Panyella into an authentic adventure lived intensely, and, in this story, New Guinea was one of the priority destinations to which he returned repeatedly throughout the 1970s as well. This is how Serra explained his return from the Sepik to his wife Edmonde Iba at the beginning of March 1970: Today I end the tour of the Sepik River. I came back from Maprik this afternoon on the flatbed of a truck, there was no other system. (...). At Maprik I got a Toyota van and a native driver. I visited all the villages around Maprik. I was very lucky to find the pieces that I wanted for years thanks to the fact that the driver knew in which town they were. (...). This morning I have returned from my tour of the Sepik (...). I am very satisfied with the result of the expedition so far, despite not having anything prepared and having to improvise everything. I have achieved very good but expensive pieces, I have spent a lot, but it more than compensates. This morning I went to see the curator of the Museum and have obtained permission to remove all the pieces, even the ones that I have agreed to in Maprik that I had my doubts about. This alone already compensates for the expedition. I was very happy when I found these carvings hidden in a hut and today others when I received the news that I can take them out. Through Mackay I have obtained two very interesting skulls. He does what he can. (...) The day after tomorrow I plan to go see Fr. Verges, he is waiting for me with joy. Mt. Hagen man with moka kina, circa 1966, photo courtesy of Serra Estate. The pleasure that Serra experienced in discovering pieces, meeting people, villages, and cultures, meeting friends, visiting new places and traveling, living, and exploring, brought him to the island again in November in 1971, 1972, and 1979. As a result, over the years, three important collections of New Guinea art arose in Catalonia: that of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona, that of Albert Folch, and that of Eudald Serra. All of them were used to promote the art and culture of Sepik, Maprik, and the Gulf of Papua, through exhibitions and publications that allowed the dissemination of knowledge of the artistic and cultural heritage of the island. Particularly noteworthy were the exhibitions held at the Athenaeum of Madrid in 1966 (Art from Sepik), at the College of Architects of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands in Barcelona in 1973 (Art from Maprik), at the Juan March Foundation in Madrid in 1977 (Art of New Guinea and Papua) and at the Pedrera in Barcelona in 1996 (Art of Papua New Guinea), as well as the book Art of Papua and New Guinea (1976), profusely illustrated with photographs taken by Serra and Folch and which turned out to be influential in the Catalan avant-garde circles, among artists and art critics, such as Francesc Vicens, José Corredor Matheos and María Lluïsa Borràs. Moutain Ok man with shield, Eliptamin Valley, 1966, photo courtesy of Serra Estate. Serra was a true adventurer. From a young age he was a fervent hiker, and curiosity led him to travel all over Europe and even Russia and Japan. At the same time, he was an artist with great concerns, and this led him to constantly travel the world to explore the artistic and cultural wealth that was preserved in the different continents. In this sense, after verifying the dramatic loss of many of the ancestral traditions of New Guinea as the people were assimilated into the ways of life of modern society, this is how Serra synthesized his understanding of the island’s art: What we in the West understand by New Guinea art is very different from what it actually is. Its symbolism, represented by different shapes, colors and materials, are based on concepts whose reason is not in the first place the beauty of the object, since this is a consequence of its religious-social function. (...) The language of forms and symbols is of paramount importance in a society that lacks a written language; It constitutes a means of social communication, at the same time that it stimulates the creative sense of the artist and the interpretive capacity of the community. Albert Folch, as a collector-businessman, managed to gather with the help of Serra an important set of pieces from New Guinea with the aim of creating, in 1975, the Folch Foundation, aimed at contributing to research and the dissemination of knowledge of the cultures of the world. At the same time, Eudald Serra’s travels allowed the sculptor to form another important private collection in search of testimonies of humanity: knowing these people, he wrote, makes us feel more human. In this way, within the extensive collection of art from world cultures by Eudald Serra, the set of pieces from New Guinea acquired a special role. Bramtevip village, Telefomin area, December 8-9, 1966, photo courtesy of Serra Estate. Serra managed to gather approximately 150 representative pieces of art from the Sepik, Maprik, and the Papuan Gulf regions. It had doors, posts, bark paintings and architectural fragments from men’s houses, such as a large 6-meter tëkët frieze from an Abelam men’s house. Likewise, in Serra's collection, the presence of shields, ritual carvings and wooden and basketry masks, skull hangers, canoe prows, overmodeled skulls, terracotta jars, tapas, and other typologies, from a large garamut drum to small objects made with coconut, shells, ceramics, or other natural materials. Bioma figures, bapa masks from the Abelam, amitung house doors from the villages near Telefomin, gope boards from the Papuan Gulf, and wooden heads used at Yena-ma festivals in the Washkuk region shared space with other pieces, modest items such as bowls, bracelets, belts, spoons, or amulets. Practically all of them were acquired in situ during the expeditions and were known and admired by artists close to Serra, such as Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró or Josep Guinovart. Pieces that in turn captured these artists for their aesthetic qualities and shapes and that on occasions were subtly incorporated into some of the projects that Eudald Serra himself conducted between the 1960s and 1970s. Ultimately, and by way of conclusion, we can affirm that Eudald Serra’s artistic eye, together with his restless and adventurous spirit allowed his long stays in New Guinea to signify a before and after in the discovery and diffusion of the island’s art in Spain, influencing both artists and new collectors, and allowing the country’s public collections to incorporate for the first time a significant and relevant set of art from Papua New Guinea.
