Her first intention was not to produce works that were aesthetically impeccable. She was at a very important moment in her life, in the awakening of her social and political conscience, in a stage of personal and artistic search, and art offered her the possibility of saying "I am here and I fight with what I know how to do". This is how she produced a group of works that are now on display for the first time and which allow us to see that already in those initial works Assumpció Mateu had very clear ideas about what she wanted to do. In these works we find the foundation of his later development.
Among these characteristics are: the value given to the materials: cardboard, wood, paper, newspapers, adhesive tape, ropes, earth, rags, veins, marble dust, etc.; the variety of resources used: stitching, tears, prints (hands and feet), scratches, incisions, traces of fire... the weight of graphics and words.
Among the compositions, some works in which hands and feet play an important role stand out. Hands and feet, footprints and symbols of man.
It should be remembered, as Chevalier and Gerbrandt point out, that the word "hand" has the same root as the word "manifestation". This is the function of the hands, which are present in these early works by Assumpció Mateu.
Antonio Salcedo - Art critic and exhibition curator
(Excerpt from the text of the catalogue "Presons íntimes" Espai Volart Exhibition. VilaCasas Foundation)
