Nit de lluna (Moonlit Night )

Leandre Cristòfol (Os de Balaguer, 1908 – Lleida, 1998) was one of the pioneers of surrealist sculpture in Catalonia. Initially trained in the expressionist tradition, in the 1930s he embarked on creative research in the field of artistic experimentation and would henceforth be associated with Spanish Surrealism.

Nit de lluna (Moonlit Night) is one of his most outstanding pieces from this period and is a fine example of his success with managing the poetic aspects of the surrealist object. Assemblage was the technique he chose for this piece. Two commonplace objects, a darning egg and a spindle, sentimentally and intuitively associated with the memory of the artist's mother, are placed in a space defined by a semi-circular wooden box. Its formal simplicity, and the new meaning with which Cristòfol imbues the objects it comprises, are remarkable. He uses no previously worked materials, and neither does he explore the expressive possibilities of commonly used or industrial elements. Rather, he decontextualizes two found objects, which he associates with each other through an interesting juxtaposition of contrasts and poetic affinities.