Teresa Lanceta: A woven memory
By Ellen Turner Hall
The latest exhibition in Céret Museum is devoted to the modern tapestries of an eclectic artist. Teresa Lanceta created her first weavings in her native Barcelona before expanding and refining her techniques through contact with Moroccan and Spanish gypsy communities. The over seventy works on display are a tribute to her exploration of the infinite possibilities of weaving, painting and patchwork.
Lanceta’s large-scale works are asymmetrical but harmonious, full of movement yet balanced, like the theme and variation in a musical composition. In Jacob’s dream, while the central image is the staircase connecting heaven and earth, Lanceta introduces her personal motifs of star, hand and eye.
Barcelona is a black and white tribute to the artist’s home, with the repeated patterns of arrows, diamonds and triangles suggesting the throbbing pulse of big city life.
For me Lanceta’s genius is in setting up patterns in order to explode them. In an untitled work she created regular waves of multi-coloured arrows which break and squeeze and buckle under the pressure of strong vertical lines only to relax back into their original flow.
The other outstanding example of the artist’s continual experimentation is Febrero 2023, Irak in which strips of painting and weaving are interlaced, the whole sewn together like a patchwork quilt.
Sensitive to the hues and changing moods of the landscape, Lanceta depicts fields in May, July and September transforming from spring green to late summer browns and beiges. Autumn evokes a peaceful walk along a forest path through tall trees.
In comparison with Lanceta’s woven tapestries so full of colour and rhythm and vitality, her sewn, patched and charcoal canvasses seem minimalist and subdued.
After you’ve taken in Lanceta’s vision, go up to the observation deck with a view of the rooftops of Céret. In the lines of roof tiles, the rows of plane trees and the geometry of the church dome you may begin to see a tapestry.
Teresa Lanceta: A Woven Memory runs from 2 March to 2 June.
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