Cloak is one of a series entitled Capas, los personajes y los Entes (Capes, Characters and Entities) by the Catalan artist Aurèlia Muñoz. In 1969, she was awarded a scholarship from the Fundación Juan March and immediately embarked on research into the history of embroidery. For Muñoz, theory sometimes came before practice, and she never lost sight of the historical precursors to her experimentation in these processes. She began by exploring old fabrics, which she found mainly in church and cathedral treasuries, but also in museums. She took a particular interest in chasubles, copes and dalmatics, the rich and ornate embroidered vestments worn in Catholic rites and used to distinguish the different officiants (e.g. bishops from deacons). These vestments are known in Spanish as ‘ornamentos’, from the Latin ornamentum (equipment) and ornare (to adorn). Following the radical transformation in religious rites wrought by the 1962 Second Vatican Council, which removed much of the pomp from the Catholic liturgy, the design of these garments was greatly simplified. As a result, by the 1970s, the older, more elaborate vestments were being displayed as relics of the past.

Cloak is something of a fulcrum between Muñoz's early career with her studies of embroidery and her first pieces (including some sculptures) in macramé. The last of her embroideries was Homage to Hieronymus Bosch (1971), and her first macramés were Homage to Gaudí and Macra Tótem, both made in 1969. In other words, this was a moment of transition for Muñoz, as she experimented with several different techniques at the same time. The titles of her artworks (and the universes she created in them) contain echoes of historical figures –e.g. Queen Isabella of Castile – but also some of the fictional characters that had appeared in her stagings from the 1960s — and if there was one essential attribute by which the character could be recognised, it was their outfit. Cloak may be inspired by the garment of an aristocrat or a Renaissance man of faith – both of which tended to be very heavy. Long and wide, with plenty of room for the neck and head, they were designed to cover, protect and shelter.

There are clear formal parallels between Cloak and some small sketches in Pyrex boxes which can be found in a number of collections. One might also see links to Three Characters (1970-71), three large fully three-dimensional free-standing cloaks with similarities to the contemporary work of Magdalena Abakanowicz. Three Characters is a large piece, which was exhibited at the V Biennale Internationale de la Tapisserie (Fifth International Tapestry Biennial) in Lausanne (Switzerland). In the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the Lausanne Biennial was the most important global forum for textile art, driving experimentation that would take the discipline beyond its traditional roots without entirely forsaking them. Textile art was also displayed at other leading international exhibitions of contemporary art. At a time when any strict separation of disciplines was rapidly collapsing, the Nouvelle Tapisserie movement - of which Aurèlia Muñoz was a leading figure – meshed and interconnected with other forms of art, without renouncing its own specific language and a history that could be traced back to the Neolithic.

Despite its references to liturgical vestments, in Cloak Muñoz managed to escape the two-dimensionality of conventional tapestries, confined to walls or floors, adding sculptural volume that she would explore further throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless, despite the third dimension afforded by its long fringes, Cloak is a transitional work and still hangs on the wall, unlike some of her later pieces which sought out a central position in the space.

At the same time, Muñóz was beginning to move towards greater abstraction, with pieces that sometimes preserved echoes of recognisable objects but did not represent them directly. Indeed, her use of natural jute macramé set Manto apart from the embroidered copes that had formed the basis of her research in churches and museums. The result in this work is almost Franciscan in its simplicity.

Isabel Tejeda