Albert Cruells.

He was born on an 11th September, when the 11th September was simply that - the 11th September.
Those were the days when priests smelt of bitter church wax and nuns of old moss. When it was always cold. When the Guardia Civil were frightening - even at a distance. Days of Heaven, Earth, Limbo and Purgatory. Cinema in black and white with double showings. Toothless old ladies praying the rosary. Days of Jose Antonio and Franco - of Lola Flores and Gary Cooper. Of laurel crowns on church walls to honour those fallen for God and Country.
From his tenderest years, four, five, six, he sought refuge in the obsessive need to draw and paint. For him it was normal, the everyday. It wasn´t a vocacion - it was simply what he did."I was a wild child with a brush in hand - still the same today".He spent his time in my Grandparent´s house. There everything was stimulating, natural - life and death.
Life - because they were always planting potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes. And death - his Grandmother (with young Albert as accomplice) dispatching chickens on a daily basis, depending on the demand from the local clientele.
My His Grandfather was Shepherd, Butcher and Mayor. His Grandmother, an exceptional cook. She spent her whole life cooking, or better said, cooking creatively. Nobody nowadays knows what that means, because creative cooking takes its time.
His only skill was to make garlic mayonnaise by hand. "I remember my arm going to sleep, like my cheek after a decent slap from the local priest for forgetting an "ora pronobis", the cause of my deep dislike of clergy which I still profess."My faithful companion throughout my infancy was a goat, Rita".Until the day she fell into a gully, she accompanied him like a shadow on all his painting excursions.
He was eight when he first exhibited, in his Grandfather´s Butcher´s shop.
He finished his secondary schooling in a college run by gloomy nuns, in a town suffering from chronic fog.
Suddenly Albert saw the light. He rediscovered life in the emblematic "Academia Baixas" in Barcelona - the essential stepping stone into Architectural School. He wanted to be an architect. He trained himself exhaustively there for three years, in the charcoal drawing of classical Greek and Roman sculpture, in a forest of sculptures with more dust that plaster.
At eighteen he started Architecture. In the decade of the sixties, with endless enthusiasm and dedication, he got to know some of the most vanguard artists of the time in full creative boom. Painters, Musicians, Economists, Cinema Producers, etc...
Architecture was a failure. For a change he lived alone and filled his time painting and cooking - as always. And if he could - both things at the same time. "One develops but does not change".
He learned to shop in markets and to get to know the good people there."Market stall holders show an exuberant happiness and an unusual, unending and contagious vitality. One of the few virtues, I think, I too possess". Anyway, he ended up marrying one of the most beautiful models in Barcelona and muse of the most radiant, vigorous modernity - that of Vinçon, Zeleste and Bocaccio, of the "Gauche Divine". Lou Reed and Frank Zappa. Nueva York and Cadaqués.
At that time, New York was the centre of a wider world and Cadaqués the centre of an inner world, where people like Peter Harnden, Paul Elouard, Marcel Duchamp learned to while away their time - the tramontana wind, some flies and millions of sea urchins.
To date, Albert has never stopped painting - the majority of his works are in the hands of private collectors, including my own.
These include politicians, bankers, business entrepreneurs, lawyers, art dealers, artists, some of the most internationally famous Spanish chefs, hoteliers, cinema and television celebrities, architecture studios, etc..."These days, my time is divided between studios in Barcelona, Aiguafreda and Cadaqués" depending on the essence, dimensions and philosophy of each project. He confesses to spending a lot of time secluded in his studio in Cadaqués (Costa Brava), with the blessed compensation of sharing, more often than I should, fantastic meals on the beach with his dear fisherman friends from Port Lligat, presided over by Linares and Mercé.
Albert continues to share life with canine friends , Tila, Gau, Tina, Chica, Mora, Negrita, Guapa, and Yuyu. With chickens and geese. With his sons Javier and Daniel. And Ingrid, his eternal work companion, who, according to Albert is amazed at how she puts up with him. "And this is how I will be until my dying day, painting or cooking. Or doing both at the same time.
Everything else is only noise".