Frederic Amat

All I can say about Frederic Amat and his work come from two different sources. The first one is completely subjective and biased by my affection towards him, since I know him and I have seen him grow up as a person and as an artist. I had him in my school ever since he started studying until he finished secondary education, when he was a teenager. What is more, he lived in a house that was in front of the school and, at night-time, I could see the light by his window from my house, which was also close to the school building. One day, when I asked him about what he used to do during those nights, he told me he was drawing and painting.

Later on, when I knew his was a real passion for painting, I recommended him to a good friend of mine and the director of Teatre Lliure (Barcelona), Fabià Puigcerver, an acclaimed artist, so that he learnt, at least, how to make theatre sets, since the journey of a painter is usually a long and difficult one. It is sufficient to say that when Frederic decided, after years of learning, to finish with theatre sets and look for new professional ways, Fabià asked if I could bring him «another chap like Frederic Amat», but that is another story.

The fact that he, being so close to the stage and theatre people, was never tempted to become an actor and feed his ego, as many youngsters would do, reassured me of Frederic’s artistic vocation. He was passionate about form and colour and that was all. A vocation, a dedication, decided from the beginning, from the time of the window illuminated in the night. So, as a person, I consider Frederic as a close relative, as a friend who is never apart, no matter how far away he is.

The second part is that of his work. I am no art critic but his pictures and graphic works in general cause a special effect on me. It is enlightening, like a new path searching for me, and which I can only find in a few artists, the ones I like, of course. I try to be objective in this respect. Amat’s creative work, with signs and symbols, with the combinations of shapes and colours, is unusual, fantastic, i.e. full of fantasy and suggestion; the road to a new world of which the author gives the secret keys and riddles to solve. Every new piece of work is a new universe to discover. Truth, goodness, beauty… are always hidden and we have to find them. After passing through Frederic Amat’s land, your eyes tend to get used to look at it in a different way. A lot of life, and many signs to go in!

Emili Teixidor. Writer. Jaume Fuster Prize of the Association of Writers in the Catalan Language. (2011)
© Mètode 72, Winter 2011/12.

«Frederic Amat’s pictures and graphic works in general cause a special effect on me. It is enlightening, like a new path searching for me, and which I can only find in a few artists, the ones I like, of course»