Josep Coll Bardolet

Josep Coll i Bardolet (Campdevànol, Girona, 1912 – Valldemossa, 2007) is an essential figure in 20th-century Mallorcan painting. Trained at the Municipal Drawing School of Vic and in Olot, the Civil War drove him into exile in 1936; he completed his training at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels before settling permanently in Valldemossa in 1944.

His painting, of a luminous and sensitive impressionism, portrayed like no other the landscape of the Serra de Tramuntana, the labours of the countryside and, above all, Mallorcan folk dances, which became his most recognisable signature.

He exhibited in Spain, France, Belgium, Sweden, Norway and the United States, and in 1980 La Lonja in Palma hosted his great retrospective. Adoptive Son (1987) and Illustrious Son (2007) of Valldemossa, his legacy is preserved by the Fundació Cultural Coll Bardolet, whose museum is based in the very town he painted all his life.