Miquel Brunet Miquel was born on 6th January, Twelfth Night, 1919, at number 21, paseo Antonio Maura in Manacor – now number 17, Passeig de Na Camel·la, the name of the original estate urbanized at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, an avenue which however, at that time and nowadays, has always been called s’Alameda, in the Mallorcan vernacular. He was born in the house his parents had built before they were married, and he still lives there. He arrived in the little world of Manacor at the same time as many abandoned the town. Those were the particularly important years of emigration. The Liberal Francesc Gomila Vadell was Mayor at the time. And electricity had been installed in the town only a few years before by the company La Energía Manacorina”.

MIQUEL BRUNET MIQUEL

As is always the case, everything could have been different. If Miquel Brunet had been rich instead of poor, tall instead of low in stature, if he had walked erect and not had a limp, if he had been born in the outskirts of Paris instead of in Manacor, if he had enjoyed travelling afar, if physically that would not have cost him such an effort to do, if he had not been so very passionate about the horse races which he could see from the little house which was the studio where he painted, if he had not missed so much even, or perhaps above all, his chickens, if he had been born now and not in those arid and harsh times, if he had not been so inclined at any given moment to stretch out in the shade of a fig tree or potter in the vegetable patch or search for nests, if ……. Naturally we cannot continue in this vein because at once we would arrive at Ortega’s concept of the obviousness of the man and his circumstances. And those of Miquel Brunet are not any more concrete or special than those of anyone else. They are what they are. Perhaps they are more discreet and homely than the majority of men and women who have produced remarkable artwork.

Cristina Ros

ARTISTIC OPINIONS