Catalan, Chinese ceramic traditions inspire each other in fusion art

A ceramic artist from Spain has found more than a workshop in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi province. He has found a home. Drawing on both Chinese and Spanish artistic traditions, Jaume Ribalta has forged a distinctive style through his work, and his journey has become a testament to cultural exchange between the two countries.

Ribalta grew up in Tarrega, a small town in Catalonia, Spain, with a long-standing ceramic tradition and close to Barcelona. His artistic journey began when he was just 8, when he joined the first Petit Taller, or Little Workshop.

One of his earliest memories is of a bathtub filled with paint and clay, a childhood scene that would become the starting point of his lifelong relationship with art and ceramics.

"To a child, it looked like the remains of a performance by a maverick painter. It was a strange and magical place, and I immediately felt that I wanted to explore it," he says.

"Ceramics had already been part of my childhood. I visited my grandparents' house, which contained many vases and porcelain plates. But at Escola Massana, a school of art and design in Barcelona, I began to understand ceramics more consciously, not only as a craft, but as a language combining drawing, painting, sculpture, architecture, design and time," he says.

Ribalta came to China in 2017 to work as an art educator, but teaching was only part of what drew him here. During his holidays, he traveled around the country, studied Chinese calligraphy and traditional painting, and sought to deepen his understanding of Chinese culture.

"I had been fascinated for a long time by cobalt-blue porcelain. I told myself that I would not leave China before finding the place where qinghua (blue-and-white) porcelain was made. My first years were spent mainly in Jiangsu province, particularly in Rugao and Nantong, where I learned from local artists and craftspeople. I studied the brush, rice paper, calligraphy and the symbolic language of traditional Chinese painting," he says.