A Spanish artist on Fillmore Street

FIRST PERSON | THOMAS REYNOLDS

Back in 2013, when the Thomas Reynolds Gallery was still in its original home at the corner of Fillmore and Pine Streets, I got a message on our still-newish Facebook page from an artist in Spain. He included his painting of our corner.

“My name is Joan Longas and I’m a painter from Barcelona, Spain,” the message said. “I just thought of sharing my last painting with you. It’s from my visit to California last summer. This is a corner that I particularly like.”

I thanked him for sharing his painting, which was already a matter of history, since the gallery’s longtime neighbor Johnny Rockets had closed. He wrote back:

“I will miss Johnny Rockets next time I visit San Francisco. The painting I mailed to you before was the third one of that same corner, from three different years. For some reason I loved it from the minute I first saw it.”

He added: “I wanted to try a nocturnal version. Nocturnals in the city always offer a festival of lights and colors. Also there is that compelling suggestion hidden behind windows in the evening. If you take a look at the other two versions you’ll see that they are joyous images, like a crisp early summer morning. That’s the way I feel every time I think of it.”

Later he wrote: “A few months ago I shared with you three of my paintings of the corner of Fillmore and Pine. This time I’m excited to share with you the invitation of my upcoming exhibition in Paris, in which the last of my paintings on ‘our’ corner will be in display.”

Those paintings went to homes in France and Spain. But they were not the last. “Our corner” has continued to inspire Joan Longas long after his last visit and the gallery’s move online. In 2021 a new version — with a vintage blue Thunderbird — was on the cover announcement of the latest exhibition of his work in Paris.

When his Christmas greetings arrived last December, the card pictured still another nocturne of Fillmore & Pine. It seemed that fate was keeping us connected. It was time to introduce his work to friends of the gallery. His newest nocturne of “our corner” was included this year in our inaugural online exhibition of his California paintings.

And finally one of his paintings of the corner of Fillmore and Pine went to a collection in San Francisco.

From the artist:

The series of five paintings I made of our corner in San Francisco began with “Let us rush to see this world,” inspired by a visit to the city in June 2008. This painting brightens my life every time. The yellowish facade (a color I love; when I imagine myself in Paradise, I’m wearing yellow and vanilla striped pants) was deliberately saturated to fill the scene with the naivete and joy of our best springs — a yearning to experience life, a sensation full of vital energy, with an atmosphere reminiscent of brief idyllic lived moments flooded with light and sunshine. Contemplating this painting, I hear in my mind Ella Fitzgerald singing “From This Moment On.”  

This painting was sold at the Galeria Jordi Barnadas in Barcelona in 2009 to the exhibitions director of the Centre de Cultura Contemporanea de Barcelona.

“In the streets of San Francisco,” was a commission from the second biggest collectors of my work, with seven paintings.

The next painting is of a return visit, this time at night, in which your gallery clearly appears, and a painting from the exhibition at the time can be seen with some clarity — enough for the artist to recognize it, actually. This painting was the first one I sold at Galerie Artima in Paris; the clients drove 290 miles from Lyon to buy it on the spot, I was told. 

The fourth is an allusion to the memory of that first spring with a ghostly ’57 T-Bird, to match the malts and hamburgers joint, to idealize the scene in “The golden land at the end of the road,” a line from Kerouac. It also sold at Galerie Artima in Paris in 2022.

A doctor and ophthalmic surgeon from Barcelona, ​​who fell in love with San Francisco after his first visit to the city for a medical conference, discovered my work through your website the day you posted the nocturnal painting “The night was all around soft and quiet.” This led him to commission me to paint “Palmers.” Today we are friends.

Art is undoubtedly that (one) means of connection and communication between every human being; it is the shortest path between two strange hearts, capable of leaping in time and distance to make a positive impact on someone’s life. Such is the case, for example, of Jules Breton’s painting “The Song of the Lark,” which saved Bill Murray from suicidal thoughts one fateful afternoon in Chicago.

— Joan Longas, Barcelona