VISITING

The forest feels like a unique space for a permanent art exhibition, but Cabanyes is modest about his originality. “Sculpture parks in Europe are nothing new, he told Metropolitan. “I think Bomarzo was one of the first,” referring to the legendary ‘Monster’s Grove’ in central Italy, designed in the 16th century by Pier Francesco Orsini, and later restored in the early Seventies by the Bettini family.

Bomarzo is just one of the many artistsic influences that Cabanyes cites from various centuries and countries. Francesc (Xicu) Cabanyes i Collell was born in 1945 to farm-tenants living first in Serinyá and later in Banyoles. He started working at the age of 12. At 16, he was working in a carpenter’s shop, and began experimenting with earthenware figurines and wood-carving. Many of his early self-taught creations were inspired by the vivid style of Swiss surrealist sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

In the Seventies, Cabanyes founded the Grup Tint de Banyoles, an artistic project that organised talks and lectures on visual and communicative art as well as playing a part in popular opposition to Franco. In fact, this was one of the motives that drew him to the idea of Can Ginebreda. “I wanted to create a space where people could move freely throughout the art…but,” he added with total sincerity, “I also wanted to annoy the Francoists.”

In recent years, the park’s erotic tone has attracted negative attention from various visitors. One of his more earthy pieces is a stone table topped with a cluster of heavily pregnant women, either in the act of giving birth or about to do so.  “English people don’t seem to like the pregnant aesthetic,” Cabanyes said, somewhat confused. “One man went so far as to say to me that he could never eat food prepared by a pregnant woman.”

In other instances, it is fair to conclude that the artist himself has actively courted controversy. A perfect example is the 1981 construction of Calze Felatori, a buttercup yellow stone chalice in the shape of a penis being fellated. Cabanyes organised a procession round Girona, and a polyester model of the sculpture was paraded towards the city’s Cathedral. Calze Felatori later lost him an exhibition contract after the commissioning gallery owner’s wife saw the piece and was shocked by it. But Cabanyes is philosophical about all criticism of his style: “When you put something in the public eye, it’s a risk you take.”