5 may, 2022 – 2023
Amparo Room. 2nd floor.
Working on this exhibition was amusing and interesting.
A short time ago I received this study, Recortes de una vida. Amparo Segarra Vicente [Cuttings of a Life. Amparo Segarra Vicente], written by Esperanza Durán Delgado for her “Master’s Degree” at Miguel Hernández University. This University, if I am not mistaken, is in Elche, Valencia Region, and is called after a poet who died at a very young age. My mother, Amparo Segarra, was very proud to be Valencian. I must also confess that my visits there to uncles and aunts, and cousins, were always very pleasant and amusing. My cousins’ husbands are very funny.
Amparo Segarra is gradually receiving the recognition that she deserves. Espe wondered regarding Amparo: “Did she live in her partner’s shadow?” In effect, that was the case. The type of person my mother was enabled my father to live a full life, in which they both succeeded.
Emmanuel Guigon, in his study that we published in the catalogue on Amparo’s collages in the year 2,000, mentions the attraction we feel towards collages. This fascination “is related to our liking, our love for the plural… This is the kind of relationships and encounters that they give rise to” (p. 53). Later on, Guigon adds: “Amparo was never worried about creating “pure” collages. She chose the “impure” collage, the mixture of types, the hybridisation of media. Rather than the use of a single technique, it is a mix that reveals, in short, the adventure of the collage” (p. 54).
The great surprise with Espe is the fact that she also creates collages and photomontages, and in several of them she used photos of Amparo that are in the catalogue of her works. Espe, in her study, also published letters that she dedicated to Amparo.
Natalia Fernández Segarra
The life of Amparo Segarra Vicente (Valencia, 1915/ Madrid, 2007) seems to be made up of pieces of vital stories that, finally, make up a composition that is worthy of the importance that, unfortunately, she has not enjoyed.
Amparo Segarra was a theatre actress that also helped to design sets and costumes. However, the artistic facet in which she stood out was as a collage artist; collages featuring a meticulous composition, full of symbols and activism against oppressions and injustices, feminist and anti-war.
Sketching, like an architect, outlining and putting into perspective the work of Amparo Segarra is not easy due to the scarce attention that has been given to her work. Not because her artistic output does not deserve it, but due to the surrounding social, political and cultural circumstances in Amparo’s case, and in that of so many female artists.
Neither were the years that make up the collage of Amparo Segarra’s life easy, especially as a republican and a woman. A journey to Ithaca featuring Amparo Segarra. Although she, like Ulysses, knew how to enjoy the trip, we must recognise the difficulties she faced from the “gods” of history, and how skilfully and generously Amparo Segrra managed to “create” wherever she went.
This study is also aimed at accompanying Amparo Segarra in this journey to recall the story, to undertake an even more interesting journey, that of Amparo Segarra the artist; that of the Amparo Segarra that began to fall in love with collages, cutting out the texts, photos and news items that appeared regarding her husband, her fellow artist Eugenio Granell, in publications and the media, thereafter making her own works full of admirable creativity and talent.
However, above all, this study is a tribute that consists of a series of letters that I wrote to her, and another series of collages that I made, based on her works.
Esperanza Durán Delgado
