Josefina "Fina" Inglés Capella

Bétera, 25 January 1940 – 31 July 2020 · Painter

Josefina Inglés Capella, known as "Fina", was Ramón Inglés Capella's sister —never his wife, a mix-up common in unverified sources. She had a happy childhood in Bétera, shaped by her maternal grandmother's stories. It was her brother who introduced her to the circle of Valencian artists and intellectuals of the time, including Pancho Cosío, Francisco Lozano, Joaquín Michavila, Juan Gil-Albert, José Luis Medina, and journalists Baltasar Bueno and Mª Ángeles Arazo.

Training and artistic career

In 1961, aged 21, she won a scholarship to study at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia, graduating as a Drawing Teacher in 1966. The year after starting, in 1962, she held her first solo exhibition at the Sala Mateu in Valencia, and received several awards, including one at the Valencia University Art competition and at the 4th Youth Art Competition.

In 1964 she lived in Paris, where she studied ceramics at the Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres —the same institution her brother had passed through years earlier. In 1965 she received a grant from the Ministry of National Education at El Paular (Segovia), where she won a Gold Medal. In 1966 she received the Third Painting Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition in Madrid, and in 1967 a landscape grant from the Valencia Provincial Council. In 1969 she won an Accésit in the "Senyera" Prize.

Between 1970 and 1972 she held a scholarship from the French government and Valencia City Council at the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. It was there that she met the French artist of Spanish descent Alex Berdal, whom she married in 1972; they had a son, Pablo. She moved with him to Paris, where she lived at the Cité Internationale des Arts and exhibited at the Salon d'Automne at the Grand Palais, receiving the Prince Rainier III of Monaco Prize. It was during this Parisian period that she came into direct contact with the Franco-German tradition of antique porcelain dolls —houses such as Jumeau, Bru, Gaultier or Armand Marseille— a sensibility that would prove decisive for the future of her brother's factory.

The return to Bétera and the porcelain dolls

After separating from Alex Berdal, Fina returned to Bétera and joined the family factory. The Porcelanas Inglés doll line was, to a large extent, her idea: she brought the knowledge of the European doll tradition and the textile and decorative sensibility —the patterns, headdresses, period costumes and choice of materials and finishes— that characterises the pieces, while Ramón handled the heads, arms and legs. In the late 1970s, some doll boxes began to bear the joint signature "Josefina y Ramón Inglés".

After the factory closed and Ramón died in 1997, Fina tried to carry on the doll business alone at the Segorbe site, under the name "Fina Inglés Porcelanas Artísticas", with a new shield-shaped mark bearing an "F". The attempt did not succeed, and the building and its contents were sold off hastily shortly after. Fina Inglés died on 31 July 2020, aged 80.

Sources

• Antonio Ten Ros, El escultor Ramón Inglés Capella y su obra en porcelana, Universitat de València, 2024. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33809.65129.
• Jorge Alonso Berzosa, Fina Inglés Capella (1940–2020). A painter who will go down in the history of Valencian art, Centre d'Estudis Locals de Bétera.