ART TO FACE ILLNESS
Through art, personal experiences are transformed into visual narratives that speak of courage and hope. This exhibition is the result of a shared journey of creativity and companionship.
Alba bacardit.
The collective exhibition was born out of the desire of many people who, while going through an oncological process, participated in the ARTAGERE-ONCOLOGY PROGRAM, aimed at supporting oncology patients and their families.
This project began in 2019 at the Kàlida Sant Pau center and is currently being implemented in the oncology units of public hospitals in Catalonia, Madrid, and Palma de Mallorca. This exhibition tells their story: their experiences, transitions, feelings, and creativity as a driving force of life. It also speaks about the entire team of healthcare professionals, family members, friends, and everyone who at some point has accompanied people going through their oncological process. The exhibition is for all of them—for those who are here and those who are not anymore. For all those who, session after session have found light through their creative process during the journey of their illness.
Each of the works in the exhibition would not have been possible without considering the intricate labyrinths through which art has travelled in the last century. These corridors have led us to the knowledge of the human mind and to the liberation of forms and colors in art. Walking through this labyrinth of art and emotions has allowed the artists we present today to reveal, through art therapy, their personal stories of perseverance and gratitude, but also of anguish and insecurity.
To enter this labyrinth of art and healing without getting lost, we follow a thread, like the one the mythical Ariadne gave to Theseus to escape the complex maze of corridors. This thread is as old as art itself, but we will begin it in the 19th century. It leads us to see beasts and masks, as well as children and games. In fact, Hans Georg Gadamer (1900-2002) maintained that art is like a game, and that play is an innate element in living beings: “We can see how puppy dogs play without hurting each other, with no precise objective, just for the sake of moving” (Gadamer, 1991). This provides them with health and well-being. Thus, we invite you to play by entering this artistic labyrinth, letting colors and shapes play with your sight and tangle with your ideas.
You are all invited to follow this thread with us.
Did you know that despite the lightness of the butterfly, it can also have its feet on the ground? In fact, both things are necessary, the sky and the earth, to feel complete. Both are also necessary to feel fortunate. Even in the deepest darkness, in the hardest and saddest moments, we can always find a small crack, a small thread of light that reminds us that everything is worthwhile; having your feet on the ground and flying. And that spark of light will give new meaning to everything, because everything we see changes depending on the light with which we look at it. The light makes us shine and makes us unique… Let’s be light.
THE BEGINNINGS: ART AND MENTAL HEALTH
The labyrinthine relationship between health and art was extensively explored in the 19th century by psychiatrists such as Philippe Pinel and Benjamin Rush, among others. Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893) was also one of them. As a great art enthusiast as well as a psychiatrist, he began to compare the alterations suffered by his patients at the famous Salpêtrière hospital in Paris with those shown by some characters in famous paintings. This is how he detected analogies between the cases he himself treated and what he saw in works such as those by Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1564-1638). The extreme tensions and contortions suffered by many psychotic patients, similar to the dances of madmen painted by Brueghel, opened a line of research that was later continued by other professionals.
It was clear that art contained traces of everyday life, but was it a sign of a pathological process? Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) tried to answer this question using the inverse approach to Charcot. The father of psychoanalysis tried to find traces of psychopathologies in the work of artists who were not known to have had any mental pathology, such as Leonardo da Vinci.
These investigations, halfway between the enigmas of the mind and its processes—still unknown at that time—and the mysteries of artistic creation, opened the door to studies by other prominent researchers. In this sense, the figure of Hans Prinzhorn (1886-1933) stands out, who had a doctorate in Art History in Vienna in 1908 before starting his career in psychiatry. This dual background made him the ideal person to organize a collection of art produced by psychotic patients that had been gathered at the University of Heidelberg since 1890. In 1919 he was hired to organise this vast collection of artistic pieces. As a result of this work, in 1922 he published the book Bildnerei der Geisteskranken: ein Beitrag zur Psychologie und Psychopathologie der Gestaltung. One of the main criticisms in his work was directed at psychiatrists who drew parallels between the art of their patients and avant-garde art. For Prinzhorn, it could not be asserted that someone was ill just because they created works similar to those of mentally ill patients, as in the case of Kandinski (1866-1944). On the other hand, the author also tried to demonstrate that the patient only creates as part of a pathological process and not as part of a free process. Prinzhorn believed that “pathological art” could not be considered “true art” and that both categories could not be judged by the same criteria. This dichotomy between a more valid or higher art opposed to a less valid or lower art lost strength as the 20th century progressed. However, the book opened a path towards an aesthetic reception of the “art of the mad” which was different to what had existed until then and, as we will see, became a cornerstone for the aesthetics and art therapy of the 20th century. Thus, art found a favorable environment to begin relating to physical and psychic states.
Edurne received treatment at the University Hospital of Terrassa to face breast cancer twice. The psycho-oncologist and the oncologist suggested she do art therapy to express emotions without words. Although she has undergone surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, she wants to show the emotional struggle after treatment, which she illustrates with visual metaphors, such as eyes on the breasts symbolizing the fear of cancer returning, legs tied like prison pants, and arms with scales representing the vital support of her family.
Edurne Tocado
TI have inside a herbarium
Antonio Machado
a dried afternoon,
lilac, violet and golden.
Whims of a solitary
It represents the visualization of the first sensation upon learning that a tumor was growing inside me; my first emotional response was rejection, a desire to tear it out, to expel it. Moving through fear, I changed rejection for acceptance—not resignation, but rather using everything I knew and had to heal my entire being in all its dimensions.
Marta Pérez
I didn’t know where to start, and I let myself go, allowing the materials to guide me: flowing from love like an expanding wave that transforms everything it touches. Rigidity does not exist and gives way to flexibility and to the blending of shapes, colors, and textures.
Milena Villegas
Boobs pop up
Cancer doesn’t warn YOU, it just appears.”
In that moment, you become forever connected to thousands of women in your same situation.
You become sisters with other people, other wounded breasts,
BOOBS all different, all beautiful, and all with the same fears…
BOOBS without hang-ups… naked but wounded, calling YOU to be observed and cared for.
… Lumps and mental processes in a downward spiral…
At least I was NO LONGER facing it so alone. Others share the same thing.
7 out of 10 will go through it. Cancer doesn’t warn YOU, but Pop-Up BOOBS do.
Eva Moscoso
Pilar, a woman living with cancer, shares her work “Ironies of Life.” She expresses the irony of facing a disease she thought affected others. She shares how, during treatment, she experienced the loss of her mother and the pandemic. When no one could go out, she walked to receive radiotherapy. Cancer made her relive moments from her childhood, and through art therapy, she tries to find beauty in everything she does.
Boti, Pilar Botaya
I applied colors with the only idea that, for me, it excuses everything: saying what I felt
Maurice Vlamink
The colonialism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries brought art from Oceania and Africa to Europe, which greatly influenced the artistic productions carried out on the Old Continent. Materials, colors, and even aesthetic theories began to be turned around. According to Valeriano Bozal, this imported art showed “in the energy of matter and color the same energy of gesture and action of the subject” (Bozal Fernández, 1991, p. 37). With these works, medicine and also art began to understand that the energy of forms and strokes did not depend on any illness, but on the same energy the artist wanted to convey.
The Fauvist movement, integrated by artists such as Maurice Vlaminck (1876-1958) and André Derain (1880-1954), among others, was interested in how to transmit this vigor. In 1905, Vlaminck showed African art masks and sculptures to Derain, who from that moment introduced more intense colors and more spontaneous compositions into his work. Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and, later, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) were also greatly influenced by the expressiveness of what they called primitive art. While in some, the influence managed to transform the way they used color, in others, such as Picasso in his iconic work Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), the influence was shown in the use of forms. While some created Fauvism, others invented Cubism, but all agreed on freeing themselves from the forms the academy had taught them.
The Fauvists, interested precisely in expression through the fierce color that characterized them and gave them their name, aspired to look at the world in a completely original way. Suddenly, upon encountering those masks and colors, they realized that the world could be seen in many different ways. These artists became children who saw the world differently, as if for the first time. In this sense, Henri Matisse declared: “You have to look, throughout your life, as I looked at the world when I was a child, because the loss of this ability to look causes at the same time the loss of all original expression” (Hess, 1998, p. 60). Vlaminck thought the same: “I still look at things through the eyes of a child,” and goes on to explain the logical consequence of this consideration: “I composed from instinct; I applied colors with the only idea that, for me, it excuses everything: saying what I felt” (Hess, 1998, p. 69).
It is a tribute to all the people who were guides, a light on my path to healing.
Marta Pérez
Reaching out to others so they can take our hands, and accepting theirs in ours, beyond any barrier. This is, among other things, an image of my experience as a patient and as a companion to other patients.
Fernando Vidal
Gemma shows us the work “Sharing,” a collaborative piece made together with Edurne Tocado, where the exchanges and personal contributions of each are shown. She also highlights her box, made to store the creations that she made in the group sessions, and which show us the seasons of the year and vigorous nature.
Gemma
In October 2022, during the interval between a chemo session and admission to Sant Pau for the transplant (of hematopoietic stem cells), my wife and I climbed up to the chapel of Santa Engracia, in the Vallespir region, French Pyrenees. We didn’t know the place. When we arrived, I was deeply moved by the beauty of the landscape and the chapel, and (although I entirely lack religious faith) I promised to return as an offering. Which we did in October 2023. The image shows me in 2022 at the entrance of the chapel, in the midst of the whirlwind that is life—always, but even more so when uncertainty is total and you don’t know if there will be another turn…
Fernando Vidal
Cancer devastates everything, including relationships. Perhaps because you reconsider many things, perhaps because it’s true that in times of need you realize the human quality of the people around you. Fear makes it difficult to look at the person you love when they are ill. I have always thought that being the caregiver is very difficult. With this piece, I allowed myself to look inside my partner and put myself in their shoes.
Arantxa Pardo
@ari_among_paintings
“Connection” was created during the last Art Therapy group session. The activity consisted of creating a piece together with all the participants. The starting point was a large blank sheet, and we could work with any kind of material. Each of us began our work on one side of the sheet, and then we went on to add a bit of ourselves to the works of our companions, always form a position of care, thought and respect. These qualities were constant in the dynamics, both when working individually and as a group.
The result is this piece, in which themes that have recurred throughout the course of the group appear, such as: shapes (spirals), the use of bright, luminous, and cheerful colors, working with elements of nature, and the use of different textures.
The idea of connecting hearts represents the bond that was created among all of us, session after session. In this connection, seven hearts appear, symbolizing the participants and Alba, who guided us with sensitivity and care throughout this experience, from which we all emerged transformed.
In the piece, scattered words can be seen: emotions, values, desires that surfaced while creating the piece—all of them positive aspects that we cultivated during this workshop.
At the end of the group, one of the participants made some bracelets with a heart, as an intention to maintain the bond and the memory of this beautiful experience, even though each of us would take our own path.
Àngels Moreno Guirado, Cristina Salvador De La Hoz, Gabriela López Alonso, Montse Arroyes Albujar i Paz Amores Cárdenas
Maria José, who receives treatment at the Hospital de Mataró, considers herself fortunate for the number of specific therapies that exist, and feels happy and supported by her family. She shares her artistic work that symbolizes the backpack we all carry with us, filled with life, light, and hope. Her backpack contains good and bad moments, and the black cord symbolizes the release of pain and sadness to keep only the good.
Maria José
To do the dance of goodbyes. The things that depart follow two tendencies. Let’s make a dance, the dance of goodbye—to what? I don’t know! But the dance leads things in two directions: the lively and the calm. It’s good that both tendencies complement each other.
Alícia Ferrer i Tiell
NEW FORMS OF EXPRESSION
The artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) met Hans Prinzhorn in person in 1920. Perhaps inspired by his ideas, Klee wrote in one of his diaries, very insightfully, that “art does not reproduce the visible, rather it makes visible” (Hess, 1998). If the leading artists had begun to see the world differently, from that moment on, making art would never again be about recreating reality, but about expressing things we do not see.
The surrealist Max Ernst (1891–1976), who was initially associated with the Dada movement and, at the same time, was deeply impressed by Klee’s art, had also read Prinzhorn’s book. The Dadaists saw bourgeois society as pathologically ill, and art created by the mentally ill was, to them, more lucid than any academic art: it allowed them to freely explore the artistic possibilities of objects in their surroundings, whether magazine cutouts or bicycle wheels. If today we see collages made with magazine clippings in this exhibition, it is thanks to them and their idea of expressing themselves through any material at hand.
Another artist, Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985), was also fascinated by Prinzhorn’s book. Dubuffet believed, like the Fauvists, that we should look at the world as children do, while also being fascinated by the works of the mentally ill. Dubuffet knew André Breton (1896–1966), also at some point associated with Dadaism and thus very interested in anti-rationalist forms of art. With his help and that of other colleagues, in 1948 they created the Compagnie d’Art brut, with the aim of gathering what he himself defined as “works executed by people untouched by artistic culture in which mimicry, unlike what happens with intellectuals, has little or nothing to do, so their authors draw everything (themes, choice of materials used, etc.) from their own depths and not from the trivia of fashionable art.” (Fauchereau, Durán Úcar, 2007, p. 9)
All of them collected around 2,000 works for the Compagnie, which were exhibited in Paris in 1967 under the label of Art Brut, meaning art made without any academic training, precisely to eliminate the stigma of mental illness. With this simple label, Dubuffet elevated all kinds of people who created art to the status of artists, not only as museum pieces or decorative elements, but as creations that facilitated the expression of the deepest parts of our emotional spectrum.
Life bursts forth with light around us, illuminating us with its strength.
Did you know that, despite the butterfly’s lightness, it can also keep its feet on the ground? In fact, both things are necessary—sky and earth—to feel complete. Both are also needed to feel fortunate. Even in the deepest darkness, in the hardest and saddest moments, we can always find a small crack, a tiny thread of light that reminds us everything is worthwhile; to keep our feet on the ground and to fly. And that spark of light will give everything new meaning, because everything we see changes depending on the light in which we look at it. Light makes us shine and makes us unique… Let’s be light.
Alba bacardit
Paz shares her work “Hope,” created during her cancer treatment in an art therapy group session. She fuses two sculptures. The first, made of modeling clay, is a small sculpture representing a girl, symbolizing her youthfulness. The second, made of clay, was part of a sculpture that was damaged, but by adding the first piece on top, Paz shows us the hope she experienced during her process and represents her transformation, the calm she gained, and her new life.
Paz Amores Cárdenas
@kikeal67
It represents any of us, starting with myself—not out of greater importance, but out of greater responsibility—carrying out something within, visualized by playing with balls in an act of self-control, and nothing more than over oneself.
Enrique Acosta
The evidence of the overwhelming illness (red) gives me strength to understand that I cannot remain in the pit (depression, black) looking at the relatives who are gone. With the spirit and strength of my love (blue), I want to get out (pink), surrounded by more love (white) and toward the light (yellow).
María Rosa Almansa
A walk through our life, where there is a moment when we change course and seek Mother Nature with serenity and peace.
Maria José
It’s simple: a piece of paper, something to write with, and a moment to leave a mark of what the mind brings to the hand, passing through the heart and, this time especially, through my left chest. Crowded, visible and invisible… but with a single goal: to get out of the dark web and resume the path of life.
Patrícia Solís Campos
This is the letter to the Three Kings that runs through your mind while you’re inside the space machine. Those almost ten minutes transported me to the green of nature, the warmth of a fireplace, a book, or even a special meal calling you from the kitchen. Nothing special for the rest of humanity, but essential inside the space machine..
Patrícia Solís Campos
YOU WILL BLOOM
I wondered how to accept losing my hair
and then you arrived: BALD WITH FLOWERS.
You came with a million ideas to create
millions of projects to grow in,
to believe in,
to help endure
this unease.
I painted you and you came to life,
bald after bald on that shirt
or blossoming bag,
each time with more volume,
each time with more flowers,
each time with more colors.
If this helps you, friend, it’s for you,
so you can see you can do it,
so you look at the sun,
move forward with everything
and learn to fly with love.
The bald with flowers is you, reading this
while you cry over the diagnosis you’ve received.
No matter what happens, you already shine
on the vast shore
of a sea of little flowers.
Eva Moscoso Pino
Happenings, or how to start experiencing art as generator of well-being
In this sense, the art of the 1940s and 1950s in the United States became crucial. The fusion of artistic disciplines that had been brewing in Europe influenced figures across the Atlantic like musician John Cage (1912–1992). Cage added elements like balls, baseball bats, cards, and objects for making sounds to his compositions. This mix allowed his disciple Allan Kaprow (1927–2006) to break the barrier between art and life by adding new elements to Cage’s formula. Dance, music, text, live painting, or seemingly trivial acts appeared together in happenings designed for public performance. Art was no longer a physical object, but an ecstatic experience for both the creator and the audience. As contemporary art curator Henry Geldzahler noted, happenings had a therapeutic effect that made him feel better even days after participating (Walther, 2005, p. 583).
Kaprow turned art into an experience with therapeutic effects for some, confirming what theorist John Dewey (1859–1952) wrote in Art as Experience (1934): “if works of art were placed directly in a human context of popular appreciation, they would have much broader appeal than art on high” (Dewey, 2008, p. 12). Dewey knew that it is precisely in the human context of leisure, play, or rest that works of art are created. Examples abound: Eugeni d’Ors (1881–1954), sent to recuperate at the Blancafort spa by medical prescription, wrote his Oceanography of Boredom in 1918. Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) also began to play with art at eighteen, making self-portraits while recovering from tuberculosis in the Puig de Olena sanatorium, questioning the meaning of his own life. Unknowingly, these and many other artists practiced a form of art therapy.
Can we say Kaprow was an art therapist because he offered physical and mental relief to those who attended his happenings? Certainly, he did not see himself as such, nor was it his goal. But according to art expert Geldzahler, the effects could be very similar to therapy through art.
“Now I look at the pure water and see you with clear eyes.” The dragonfly represents me; it has always accompanied me. This time, I see myself reflected in calm waters. The illness now rests, it is part of my new self, my entire metastatic process. I look at myself with clear eyes, and in the reflection, I see who I have become. I see you with clear eyes, leaving many things behind. This piece shows me who I am becoming.
Arantxa Pardo
@ari_among_paintings
In this work, I have depicted all the fruits I have gathered during my process: understanding, patience, strength, courage, bravery, composure, compassion, and love.
Montse Arroyes Albujar
In Japan, there is a centuries-old technique called Kintsugi, which consists of repairing broken ceramic pieces and, instead of hiding the cracks, making them more visible with gold or silver powder. These pieces gain new value. That’s how my body is now, after losing my breast, my uterus, my ovaries… behind those scars, there I am: more valuable, braver, more powerful, wiser. After all that’s been lost, all that’s been learned.
Betty Serrano
Sometimes we are very rigid and inflexible with ourselves or with the circumstances around us, trying to always keep control and fighting against the elements. This exhausts us, and we don’t always get things to go our way.
So, the best thing would be to be like water and flow naturally through paths and circumstances instead of going against the current.
Betty Serrano
The connection I need today, maybe I’ll find it between the sky and the sea… in the simplicity of my art… in the immensity of my being.
Milena Villegas
What are you afraid of?
The water won’t hurt you.
The waves will rock you, will dance your life.
Close your eyes and let yourself go. Float, let yourself be rocked.
The sun will light your face,
the depth will flood you.
Boti, Pilar Botaya
Art in the face of illness
However, it’s important to remember that an art therapist is a professional who uses the arts to care for the human mind. In this sense, the key figure is a psychiatrist and artist who, though not widely recognized for his artistic side, used art as therapy for the same reason many artists before him had sought: to feel well. This was Adrian Hill (1895–1977), considered the first psychiatrist to use the term art therapy, in his book Art versus Illness in 1945.
In his 1941 lectures, he was already using the word art therapy and encouraged people not to be discouraged by the medical tone of the concept “therapy,” clarifying that, in reality, his sense of the word was that “a little of what you fancy will do you good” (Hill, 1943, p. 09). Following this idea, it was necessary to avoid trying to make art in order to master a technique, process, or method. Such attempts lead to frustration due to the time required. Instead, he encouraged making art simply for the adventure of creating. According to his observations, those who take this second path have no need to master technique and feel freer to create and express themselves. His intention was not to guide his patients toward excellence “because here the object of art is mainly a happy occupation in exhausting circumstances” (Hill, 1945, p. 48).
His path was followed by other artists, art educators and psychologists, such as Edith Kramer (1916–2014), influenced by the revolutionary methods of the Bauhaus school—where Paul Klee, by the way, taught color theory. Hill, Kramer, and many others contributed to the development of art therapy techniques and artistic practices by hundreds of artists over the centuries. Thanks to all of them, today we can feel free to mix paper with modeling clay and colors to release emotional knots and leave the labyrinth of our emotions with more light and color.
Epílogue
ART-AGERE is an organization that designs, implements, and evaluates art therapy projects for both public and private bodies, working directly with their professionals. Its goal is to use the potential of art to promote health, well-being, and quality of life. Its mission is to generate healthy relationships and environments in every area where it operates, creating spaces for well-being, discovery, expression, and reflection.
ART-AGERE’s framework is based on listening, presence, empathy, and compassion. Rigor and coherence are its guiding principles. Creativity, exploration, innovation, and research are its driving forces. Art therapy uses creative processes as the main means of communication. It facilitates the exploration of difficult situations with a curious perspective and fosters self-knowledge and well-being.
Through a creative process, and without requiring any prior artistic experience, it helps develop resilience, restore emotional stability, and process the circumstances a person is experiencing and finds difficult to navigate.
