Coll Bardolet

Musicians and dancers from Mallorca oil on board painting Spain

c.1980

Josep Coll i Bardolet (Campdevànol, Ripollés, November 7, 1912 - Valldemosa, July 30, 2007) was a Spanish painter. He studied in Vich and Olot. At the end of 1936, when the civil war began, he went into exile from Spain, and settled the following year in Tours, where he had his first individual exhibition in the gallery of the Touraine Institute. At Christmas 1937, he moved to Brussels, He worked in the port of Antwerp and enrolled in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. He remained in the Belgian capital until 1939, the year of the outbreak of the Second World War, when he decided to return to Spain. He initially settled in Barcelona. Subsequently, he remained for a few years in Mallorca, although with a hiatus of a few months in Madrid, where he studied engraving at the San Fernando Academy. Finally, in 1944, he settled permanently in Valldemosa (Mallorca). He exhibited in Vic, Barcelona, ​​Palma de Mallorca, France, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and in the United States. His painting, sensitive and sincere, in an impressionist style, has drawn the landscape, agricultural work and Majorcan dances with watercolor, collage and especially oil painting. He also dedicated himself to still life and illustration. Coll Bardolet was also one of the founders of the Balearic Cultural Work. In 1964, he decided to promote choral music by organizing the Torrente de Pareis Concert, which has been held annually since then. When he died, he donated most of his work to the Sanctuary of Lluc, in Mallorca. Another part was bequeathed to the Coll Bardolet Cultural Foundation in Valldemosa.