Josefa Tolrà i Abril

Josefa Tolrà i Abril (6 January 1880 – 15 October 1959) was a Spanish Catalan medium and artist, known for her drawings, writings and embroideries made during her trance state.

Her works have been categorised as naïve art and exhibited in major Spanish museums such as the Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre and the Prado Museum in Madrid, the National Museum of Art of Catalonia (MNAC) and the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in Barcelona, as well as at the 59th Venice Biennale and the Pompidou Center in Paris.

Biography Tolrà was born on 6 January 1880 in Cabrils, Catalonia, Spain, in a family of peasants. As a young woman, she received very limited education and worked in a textile factory, where she met revolutionaries and spiritualists.

After the death of two of her three children, one of them during the Spanish Civil War, Tolrà began to practise as a medium and healer in the 1940s, when she was already over 60, after hearing voices and seeing faces as a result of the depression she fell into. According to Tolrà, her drawings and writings were the work of spirits and "beings of light", who dictated them to her, and while in a mediumistic trance. She referred to her drawings as Dibujo fuerza fluídica ("I draw fluidic force"). The works were chosen by psychiatrist and evaluated by art critic .

Selected works Astro Sol, Tierra, Marte, Venus (1944) Personajes y animales (1945) Mujer con abalorios (1948) Dibujo gracia del siglo III (1948) Dibujo método fluídico representa César Augusto con su carro (1950) Paisaje del Congo Indio joven (1951) La gran teósofa (1953) Adán y Eva (1953) Musa coreana (1953) Dibujo fuerza fluídica. Última cena (1953) El alma de la fantasía (1959) Jardín del Eden

Sources: Pompidou Centre, Paris

Temporary exhibitions 2023: National Museum of Art of Catalonia, Barcelona (with Madge Gill) 2016: Queen Sofía National Museum Art Centre 2015: Musée d'Art Naïf – Max Fourny, Paris 2015: National Museum of Art of Catalonia