Salvador Francesch was born in 1945 in Barcelona, in the 1960´s readings on Western and Eastern philosophies prompted him to travel extensively for a period of few years in Europe, the Middle and Far East motivated by a quest into the sources of Eastern Philosophy. He spent one year in India studying Metaphysics with B.L. P. Bedi. In 1968 while staying in India he begun painting to research the potentiality of colour as Colour to manifest states of inner consciousness. During the three years period of his travels, he had the opportunity to delve into several spiritual traditions and systems of knowledge which uncovered the basis of his research. Upon his return from India in 1970 he spend six months in Amsterdam where he decided to seek residence in Canada.

In 1972 he met his long life companion Ángels Tebé in Barcelona, and in 1974 they moved to Toronto, Canada, where they were married the following year. He pursued independent studies related to Esoteric Philosophy, Jungian Psychology, Vedanta, Ethnology, Shamanism and Ritual Art, along with his core studies strongly focused on the teachings by The Tibetan of the Trans-Himalayan School of Thought through the books of Alice B. Bailey. During 1974-1977 attended an independent study group on Eastern Philosophy and Metaphysics. In 1980 he received a BA from the department of Philosophy at York University in Toronto, as he continued to work in his paintings and sculptures.

In 1980 he became a Canadian citizen.

During the 70’s and 80’s Salvador Francesch endeavoured to present his art work to several fringe art galleries in Toronto with no response.

In 1981 he travelled to the Trans-Himalayan regions of Sikkim, Nepal, Lahoul, and Ladakh for further research on ritual art and Shamanism.

During the 1980´s Francesch produced, wrote and presented The Labyrinth a weekly radio program for CKLN Radio in Toronto, a program intended to explore the metaphysics of rebellion through sound performance. He also collaborated and contributed to the radio program Possible Musics designed to play recordings of ethnic music and comment on its ceremonial and ritual aspects. He conducted extensive interviews with prominent artist musicians of the time. In 1987 he free lanced by producing, writing and presenting several radio programs for Radio Nacional de España La Dos which texts under the concept ”Ars Sonora” presented the audio proposals of experimental, avant-garde, repetitive and generative musics. And in 1990 for the CBC Toronto, he produced a series of radio programs to introduce the audience into traditional ethnic music.

In 1985 he created an audio experimental sound entity under the name Tibetan Red, a conceptual idea that was born out of the mist of post-punk nihilist philosophy. During that time under the banner “everything was possible” and the do-it-yourself philosophy, a myriad of mosaic experimental sounds took place which greatly expanded and hanged the scope of experimental music. Tibetan Red’s proposal is to explore other possible readings of given sound texts, by extracting and adding his own created sounds which search for massive tapestries of psychic geographies.

From 1987-1989 Francesch collaborated as artistic advisor to the Theatre del Mercat de les Flors in Barcelona. And he contributed ideas and concepts to the performing theatrical group La Fura dels Baus.

From 1990-1998 he worked for the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, Canada. This opportunity allowed Francesch to search into some of the essential tenets of the First Nations circular philosophy which entails concepts related to interrelationship, impermanence and interdependence among others of ceremonial art, burial, ornamentation, circular use of sounds and Mother/Earth consciousness which are all closely linked with some of the basic principles of Trans-Himalayan Philosophy.

In 1996 Salvador Francesch finally made it into Tibet, his life long aspiration where he visited more than thirty monasteries and “gompas” along with many religious sites and ritual constructions as he was researching notions related to ritual art and its relationship with Lamaism. This impressive first voyage became a turning point of his art work. The majestic presence of the land, the depth of its solitude, its profound silence and the intrinsic esoteric atmosphere greatly influenced in a definitive way the direction of his art work.

He completed the Tibet experience when in 1998 he travelled to the Western Tibet regions of Mount Kailash, the ancient Kingdom of Guge main city Tsaparang, Tirthapuri, the Chang Tang plateau and the three sister lakes of Mapham, Dangra and Namtso, to continue his research and further explore the different aspects of the Bön religion and ritual art.

Upon his return from Tibet in 1998 Salvador Francesch after almost 25 years of residence in Canada, packed everything and relocated from Toronto to the Northern Catalonian region of the Pyrenees in the province of Girona, where he lives and continues working on his art work and his studies on Eastern Philosophy.

In 2005 he travelled to Japan for further research on Shintoism and its relationship to Zen Buddhism and Shamanism.

about his art work

paintings

Salvador Francesch has defined his art work as an attempt to bring out visualizations about the relationships between the Absolute and the Inner Being. This involves the registration of states of inner consciousness along with notions of substance, space and light in its multiple aspects of manifestation and evolution. Infused and rooted on Eastern Philosophical spiritual principles, the proposal of his paintings offers a possibility among many in trying to present the array of forces and energies that conform the Inner Being, as it develops and expands its perception towards the concept of Totality. This relationship is explored through archetypal geometrical forms and Colour Fields expressions of radiative activity as they move, relate and transmute within the different inner planes qualified by the entity of Colour Itself. His point of focus is based upon tracing these forms and colours as they stage the different situations and transitions of the Inner Being as an evolutionary force. It is like portraying infinite fragments of unfolding inner consciousness. His art work - although still informed by it - bears little or no resemblance to the external world of forms and the immensity of its own discourse, as it runs the endless gamut of its ever continuous spiralling experiential unfoldment. Instead it focuses on quasi non existent observations of the quiet intra-world of psychic unfoldment.

sculptures

Salvador Francesch art sculptures is a post requiem, ritualised art form that attempts to render homage to organisms and objects whose living experience or functional activity have ceased to be. By ritually wrapping, dressing, ornamenting specifically perceived found objects, or organic matter like sticks, stones, driftwood, trees, antlers, sea shells and bones, and by using materials like hair, ashes, algae, material cloth, ties, strings, rope, grass and sand. He penetrates into a world of offerings, respect, and quiet Earth meditations on the nature of Presence and the concept of Transiency. By this process Francesch initiates a ritualised form of remembrance where by the object/organism is ‘dressed up’, transformed and honoured for its former existence, its inherent spirit. It is an act of Self-Remembering the ‘body’ or the trace of it, which brings out recognition of the historic content/reading/memory that the object/organism was carrying as a life messenger.

Francesch’s approach to this art concept is in assimilating perceptions related to Animism, Shamanism and Ritual Art with the intend to reflect on the different aspects of ‘excessive’ civilization. His pieces present us with sign-posts that impress remoteness and ‘sadness’ of the things past, which act as a counterpoint to the present stream of consciousness. Another reading approach of his art pieces is on its fringe reflections on the Spiritual Ecology onslaught. But essentially is about ceremonial memory expressed in ritualised form.