Spanish medium and artist Josefa Tolrà made it her life’s mission to spread love and to make the invisible visible with her drawings and embroidery
After becoming a “mechanical transmitter” – as she identified herself – Josefa Tolrà drew and wrote as an antidote to sadness and depression.
Josefa Tolrà in 1957
Like other mediums in the first half of the twentieth century – most of whom were women – she felt a responsibility to offer her services to a humanity overwhelmed by the great tragedies that had filled Europe, with millions of souls in need of saying goodbye to their loved ones. To this end, as a gesture of hope and comfort for others – as well as a way to heal the wounds of her own soul – Tolrà put down words and drawings as a psychic trance experience and, between 1941 and 1959, produced over a hundred artworks and filled multiple notebooks with illustrations and texts that she termed “inspired”
Inked pages from Horizons, one of Tolrà’s sketchbooks from 1949
She composed poems and magical calligrams of paranormal origin, embroidered silk shawls in a fluid filigree style, wrote novels, and served her neighbours as a healing medium. She perceived people’s auras and used a pendulum to interpret electromagnetic forces which she felt allowed her to alleviate their psychological distress.
By PILAR BONET JULVE
This is an article extract; read the full article in Raw Vision 128.
