STRAMBOTISM
Strambotism
Stambotism is a new artistic trend. Unclassifiable, indefinable, which escapes intellectual encroachments because it is born from each individual’s subjectivity.
In a way, everyone can be Strambotic. But in Strambotism’s epicentre there are muses and a terrifying cyclopean imagination.
It works like a fabulous “CONDENSER OF AN IMPULSE” and it is nourished by an inexhaustible imagination.
Strambotism is an altered but conscious reflection of the reality around us. It is born from a delicate balance between “common sense and impulse” in which imagination is the essential component.
A phenomenal impulse, which nothing can stop or control, with just the right amount of common sense to be able to manage it and avoid self-destruction, and which suddenly leads the individual to do things that are not “normal”.
A common sense that never limits creativity, allowing the painter (or artist, creator or person in general) to imagine and do extraordinary things. It is a creative mechanism that is activated when an adult keeps his imagination intact when he was a child.
The combination of a child’s imagination and an adult mind results in hyperbolic power. In creative terms, it is an extremely powerful combination. Strambotism is not about discovering an unknown method, or inventing anything, but rather describing a creative mechanism that has been widely used by many creators since immemorial times. The visual manifesto is the Strambotic trilogy, 3 oil paintings of enormous dimensions which with the metaphors which appear in the Strambotic Legendarium define this new movement. Strambotism is observing your surroundings with a child’s imagination and altering the elements with all the capacity and effectiveness of an adult mind. Without prejudices, formulas, restrictions, or conventionalisms. Everything is possible and the limit is your own imagination.
Quim Hereu
Fragment of the Strambotic Manifesto.
HISTORY
Aunt Conxita
When Hereu was a little child, his aunt Conxita was the first person he heard who used the Catalan word “estrambòtic” – which means unusual- to describe the drawings he used to do while lying on the floor, in his grandparent’s house, while his aunt made him tea. Joan Fuster Gimpera invented the term “Strambotism” applied to painting, with the intention of presenting a new artistic movement during the seventies. Finally, in the year 2004 Joan Fuster met Quim Hereu and Fuser gave Hereu the task of completing the creation of the Art movement which he had started and to present it to the world. Fuster died in 2011. Hereu is the maximum exponent and representative of Strambotism.
Alchemy
Quim Hereu met Joan Fuster in 2006 in a place called “Alchemy”, Fuster’s workshp in Estartit (Girona, Catalonia). From that moment onwards a friendship started alongside a strong artistic connection between the two which ended, little before Joan Fuster’s death (2011), with the task of completing the new movement and presenting it to the world. Strambotism was searching for a “father and a “mother”. And it has them now.
Strambotic trilogy
Hereu wanted to to something which had never been done before: to present Strambotism to the world with an enormous exhibition. He wanted to announce it. And he had an idea: a birth presented by another birth. The first birth was Strambotism, the Art style, and it would be announced with a painting of the Strambotic birth of Venus. With this in mind, he started the Strambotic trilogy: 3 paintings of enourmous sizes. Time, Power and Freedom, 6x 12 m each which would be the visual manifesto of the new Art movement. The first painting, and the most important, would be the icon of Strambotism and it would be based on a work of Art of a painter who had fascinated him when he was a child: The birth of Venus, by Boticelli. Hereu would take twelve years to start the Strambotic Trilogy.
Testament
In 2010, an extraordinary, singular event took place: Fuster turned Hereu into the testamentary heir of Strambotism. After the Fuster’s death, he would continue the work begun by redefining the Strambotism with his own contributions and promoting it strongly with the Strambotic Trilogy, the book of the Strambotism, the Legendarium and the creation of the Espai Quim Hereu, the sanctuary of Strambotism open to the general public.
LA FORTALESA (The Fortress)
For 3 years it was the gallery-studio of Quim Hereu. Located in the mountain fortress of the Sants Metges in Girona, Catalonia. The Espai Quim Hereu hosted the Strambotism's visual manifesto: the world’s largest oil painting trilogy. The ``Fortress of Sant Julià de Ramis`` had to close in 2020 due to the death of main promoter Ramón Lopez.
Strambotic Sanctuary
We are creating the structure of what will be an international cultural center dedicated to the dissemination of universal knowledge regarding Strambotism. The trilogy will be located at the new Espai Quim Hereu.Strambotic work of Art
In painting, Strambotism consists of doing bizzare, strange things, but making it as natural as possible. It consists of drawing and painting figures and objects that are common in our environment but in a strange, particular, unusual way. It consists of making impossible associations and altering the properties of the elements that compose them. In short, doing unusual things, where the essential ingredient that will make the whole process possible, is imagination. The imagination of when we were children combines existing forms and elements with nature to create combinations, new theatrical environments, strange, curious and unreal, although very real at the same time, as contradictory as it may seem. Drawing is the basis of any Strambotic work of Art.
