Charo Sanjuán Gómez, a historian and the Director of Aurea Cultura i Art, first discovered the work of the Argentine artist Atilio Boveri (1884-1949) during an extended sojourn in Buenos Aires in the 1990s, while researching the painter Hermen Anglada-Camarasa and other Argentine artists and intellectuals of his circles. It was then that she met the artist’s widow, Elba Cecchini, who had preserved a considerable number of Atilio Boveri’s artistic works, which she later donated to the Museu de Pollença and the Museu de Mallorca. Charo Sanjuán has curated three exhibitions on Boveri at these two museums. She has also written several articles about the artist and has continued to study his life and his work, which includes paintings, drawings, engravings, ceramics, furniture design and decorative murals, as well as architecture, garden design, educational projects, literature and more. It is for this reason that the artist is often described as having a “Renaissance spirit”.

In addition to providing a classification of Atilio Boveri’s vast and diverse body of work, the catalogue, which is now highly developed, will include an in-depth study of his life and production, accompanied by a wealth of abundantly illustrated documents.

We need only look up his career in any Argentinean art history or reference book to see that we are before a rather unusual individual who sparks our curiosity. As we learn more about him, we are taken aback not only by the wide range of techniques he employed, but also by his perfect mastery of them and his tremendous capacity for work. His educational projects reveal a person who was far ahead of his time and the place where he lived. A reading of his letters and writings gives us an idea of how consistent he was, and of his great ability to overcome discouragement when his most ambitious projects were discarded or forgotten. We learn that he had the great fortitude to start anew, from scratch, time and again, and the perseverance to continue to pursue the projects that had been rejected.

Delving deeper into his work, we see that the diverse range of techniques employed in his work formed the language that he used to express concepts. After all, he sought to convey ideas in everything he created or designed. Whenever he embarked on a new theme, he first took the time to learn everything about it, from its basic principles to the latest theories, and before using a technique, he studied and practised it to the point of mastery.

In all he did, there was always a conviction that the artist should be useful to society. Indeed, among the essential qualities of his work was a defence of such utility, along with a spiritual and moral value. In a letter dating from 1941, Boveri asserts, “And in this sense there is an entire world of philosophy to be conceived, not simply in the theoretical sense, but through direct execution and based on the thinking head, the silent mouth and the hands that produce the positive work and transcendental act”.