Artwork of the month April 2026

Artwork: Vase with a Young Faun, by Josep Guardiola i Bonet (Villa de Gràcia, 1869 – Barcelona, ​​1950)
Place/Date: Gràcia, Barcelona, ​​May 19, 1946
Material/Technique: Wheel-thrown clay with freehand decoration
Dimensions: 18 x 10 cm // Ø 8.5 cm (base)
Collection: Maricel Museum, Sitges. Maricel Collection, inv. no. 89. Gift of Mr. August Bernat, 2019

Josep Guardiola i Bonet was a painter by vocation and a ceramist by choice. He practiced both painting and ceramics until the end of his life, without receiving critical acclaim in either medium. His ceramic work enjoyed some public success and, in the long run, was what brought him recognition as an artist.

In his youth, he trained as a painter, a childhood vocation encouraged by his parents, textile factory workers.

Guardiola was not a typical ceramist; he never made the ceramic pieces on which he applied his decorations, nor did he ever own a kiln. Chronologically, he belongs to the Noucentista ceramic painters/decorators, such as Josep Aragay and Xavier Nogués, despite being from an earlier generation. However, he cannot be considered a member of the Noucentista group, with whom he maintained a distant relationship.

Guardiola decided to become a ceramic decorator, as he preferred to call himself, relatively late, in 1917, training himself with the help of the ceramist Lluís Diví, from Esplugues de Llobregat, who supplied and fired the plates and vases he decorated.

In 1918, he held his first exhibitions in Barcelona, ​​initially at the Palau de Belles Arts, within the section of the Fomento de las Artes Decorativas (FAD), and subsequently at the Sala Parés. However, the reviews were not favorable. His style, influenced by the 16th- and 17th-century paintings he had studied and copied at the Prado Museum, was far removed from the official Noucentisme movement. Nor were his subject matters. Guardiola's figures—satyrs, nymphs, and putti—lived playfully in a springtime and sensual Arcadia.

In 1919, he exhibited for the first time in Madrid, a city where the critics were always more favorable to him, and in 1923 he won a silver medal at the annual Fine Arts exhibition.

However, that year, 1919, was marked by the death of his only son, Jordi, in a tragic accident at home. This event profoundly affected him, and from then on he signed his ceramics as Josep Jordi Guardiola.

His participation in the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern and Artistic Industries in Paris marked a turning point in his career. At this exhibition, which represented the triumph of Art Deco, Guardiola achieved one of his greatest successes. Although French critics were not unanimous, Guardiola was well received. Sales were also remarkable, making him the third best-selling Catalan exhibitor after the jewelers Masriera and the furniture makers Viuda de José Ribas. But for him, the most important event was that George Lechevallier-Chevignard, director of the Sèvres porcelain factory, acquired one of his vases for the Sèvres Museum. A friendship developed between Lechevallier-Chevignard and Guardiola, leading him to undertake two work periods at the French factory in 1934, and where, during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), he and his wife, Maria Sallent, found refuge.

Upon returning to Barcelona, ​​he was showered with tributes, accolades, and a major exhibition at the Palau de la Virreina. It was during this later period that Guardiola created the earthenware vase decorated with a young faun, now housed in the Sitges Museums. Guardiola signed and dated the piece on the base: "Yos. Jordi Guardiola, May 19, 1946, Barcelona (Gràcia)."

Guardiola produced the vase at the Escola del Treball in Barcelona. His relationship with the Divino kiln had ended in early 1936 when he wished to continue making stoneware pieces, as he had learned in Sèvres. For this reason, he needed a kiln capable of reaching high temperatures, which the Divino kiln could not. Therefore, he enrolled at the Escola del Treball to gain access to its kilns. After the war, he continued using the kilns at the Escola del Treball, but this time paying for their use and for the materials used, such as the pieces themselves and the charcoal for firing. Gràcia refers to the location of his home and workshop, on Mozart Street.

The vase is decorated with a child faun carrying a garland of flowers. The theme represents a fusion of two of Guardiola's most frequently depicted motifs throughout his career: children or putti with garlands and fauna.

From virtually his earliest ceramics, the theme of putti is a constant, whether depicted individually or in groups, with garlands or trays of fruit and flowers. Their poses remain unchanged from 1917 until his last works. In fact, Guardiola kept throughout his life some glass plates he had made in his studio, probably around 1920. The plates show a naked girl and boy carrying a vase or fabrics representing garlands. This is a small series of four photographs in which the models adopt the poses that we will later see reproduced in his oil paintings, drawings, and ceramic decorations.

In this case, the putti has been transformed into a young faun. A mythological being that, for Guardiola, represented his alter ego. In fact, he had combined his work as a painter and ceramist with that of a literary critic for La Vanguardia and the magazine De Tots Colors, where he wrote under the pseudonym Faune. Fauns were forest spirits with the lower limbs, ears, and horns of a goat. Mischievous beings, followers of Dionysus or Bacchus, the god of wine, always accompanied by the Bacchantes. Guardiola himself also wrote poetry and published several books, where he extolled the wine of Tyana in some of his poems; while in his diaries and autobiographical writings, he speaks of the sexual urges he felt toward women from a very young age.

This vase is presented as a synthesis between the work and the personality of the ceramic decorator Josep Guardiola.

Basic Bibliography

BEJARANO, Juan Carlos. “Wandering Hours / Self-Portrait, by Josep Guardiola i Bonet,” in: La Peça del Mes. Sitges: Sitges Heritage Consortium, October 2024. Online: https://museusdesitges. cat/es/peca-del-mes/peca-del-mes-doctubre-2024 (accessed: March 30, 2026)
DE LA FUENTE, Vicente. “Josep Guardiola, the Ceramic Decorator,” in: Catalan Artists at the 1925 Paris International Exposition.
Barcelona: Association for the Study of Furniture, 2026 (in press).

GUARDIOLA, José. “The Life of the Master Ceramicist Josep Guardiola i Bonet, Told by Himself,” in: Never Back. Bulletin of the Gràcia Excursionist Center, no. 43, August 1928, pp. 94–98.

SAPERAS, Miguel. Josep Guardiola. Biographical Essay. Barcelona: Salvador Cots, 1949.
Tramontane, year XXXVI, no. 342, February 1952 (special issue dedicated to Guardiola).

Vicente de la Fuente Bermúdez, Art Historian, Sitges, April 2026