art exhibition

The Picasso Museum of the Catalan capital will no longer be solely run by the municipality. From the 1^st of January 2014, it will be managed by the public-private Picasso Museum Foundation. This will be the beginning of a new era for the museum, which is set to focus on the conservation, study and development of its own artistic heritage, by launching the ‘Centre de Referència Picassiana on-line’, dedicated to researching and teaching Picasso around the world. The managers of the museum also wish to delve into the influence of Picasso on contemporary art. Such an idea is at the core of the next exhibition dedicated to the illustrious painter: Post-Picasso: Contemporary Artists' Response to His Art, held from the 7^th of March to the 29^th of June, 2014.

The National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) hosts the retrospective ‘I work the street’ dedicated to photographer Joan Colom. It is the very first time an exhibition presents all of the artist’s works, amongst which are many previously unpublished images. From the 12^th of December 2013 to the 25^th of May 2014, visitors will be able to see 500 pictures, notably Colom’s most iconic images: black and white photos secretly taken in Barcelona’s Raval in the 1960s. His feature stories from the 1990s are also presented to the public. Colom’s donation of various photographic materials in 2012 enabled such a comprehensive exhibition to take place. The Director of the MNAC, Pepe Serra, said the exhibition was unusual in many aspects.

The 2013 winner of the prestigious Hasselblad Foundation Photography Award – which is like the Nobel Prize in this field – has been exploring the “aesthetics of censorship” in texts dating from the 16^th to the 19^th century. The “violent interventions” of censors are revealed in ‘Deletrix’, a series of photographs taken by Catalan Joan Fontcuberta and exhibited at the Santa Mònica Arts Centre of Barcelona. In addition, Fontcuberta also releases a book displaying the artist’s 6 years of delving into archives and libraries. Fonctuberta did not wish to solely condemn censorship and defend freedom of expression.  He also observed that the “violent” and “visceral energy” expressed in these human interventions influenced some contemporary works of art. And therefore, the photographer sought to explore the relationship between art and censorship.

Catalonia’s National Museum of Art (MNAC) proposes a new way to discover its Romanesque Art collection – which is the most important in the world – through the eyes of an important figure of European Contemporary Art: the Catalan Painter, Sculptor and Essayist Antoni Tàpies (1923 - 2012). The Barcelona-based museum has carried out a “small intervention” in the halls of the Romanesque collection so that visitors are able to see the exhibited works with interpretation elements and views linked with Tàpies’ work and thoughts. In addition, the MNAC is also exhibiting one of the artist’s most emblematic works: the Romanesque Painting with Barratina (Pintura Romànica i Barretina, 1971)

Three exhibitions convey the splendour of the city of Girona (in north-eastern Catalonia) during the Middle Ages. The curators of all three exhibitions wished to break away from the notion of “darkness” which is often associated with such times, when these several centuries actually shaped the city’s glorious past. Visitors can get acquainted with 13^th century Jewish doctors or intellectuals, walk down the streets of Medieval Girona, and contemplate masterpieces such as the portrait of Catalan King Peter III. The City Museum, the Museum of Jewish History and the Monastery of Sant Daniel are hosting exhibitions on medieval Girona until the 30^th of March 2014.

This Friday, the Joan Miró Foundation presented the program for the 2013-2014 season. ‘Art in Public Space’ is the provisional title of the project that will take place between January and July of next year. It will bring together sketches, preparatory drawings, models, photographs and videos that form the background of Miró’s work that has been showcased in public areas. The Director of the Foundation, Rosa Maria Malet, also shed light on forthcoming temporary exhibitions including ‘Before the Horizon’ and ‘A place where artists have the right to fail. Stories of Espai 10 and Espai 13 at the Fundació Joan Miró’.

The Landscape of the Geniuses tourism project celebrates how the Province of Tarragona (south Catalonia) has influenced the work of four world renowned artists: Antoni Gaudí, Joan Miró, Pau Casals and Pablo Picasso. The route focuses on four municipalities in the Costa Daurada and the Ebro Valley, in which these artists spent a considerable amount of time, and explore how the region left a lasting impression and inspired them in the creation of their work. The route involves 270 points of interest and accommodation facilities that include: museums, architecture, restaurants, hotels and campsites. A tourist card gives access to all of the visitor centres along the route as well as numerous discounts.

The Joan Miró Foundation, located in the Catalan capital, is to hold an exhibition in the 2013-14 season that will focus on the horizon as a concept in modern painting. Works on show will explore the development of the horizon in art from the 19^th century to the present day. Among the temporary exhibitions that take place during next season, the museum will also show a selection of prints and lithographs from Joan Miró himself that will examine the experimentalism of the internationally renowned Catalan artist between the 1930s and 1960s. The museum will also have an exhibit of American artist Roni Horn.

MACBA and CaixaForum unveiled their first joint exhibit on Thursday, which shows one of the most important contemporary art collections in southern Europe. The project is called 'Art dos punts. Barcelona viu l'art contemporani' (Art in two sites. Barcelona is moved by contemporary art) and contains a selection of 400 works by 125 artists with a focus on modern and post-modern art. The collections of both institutions contain up to 6,000 pieces. The Director of MACBA, Bartomeu Marí, explained that the aim of the project is to create a story “that challenges recent history and puts us in a better position to understand the contemporary world.”

After Francisco Goya, Marià Fortuny is considered the greatest Spanish painter of the 19th century. He was deeply influenced by Goya and by his trip to Africa. His pictures are characterised by bright colours and intense dynamism. He also began to show elements of Impressionism in his work.. The exhibition contains 45 paintings that pay tribute to his 175th birthday. It is a project organised by the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and the local museum of the artist’s hometown, Reus, near Tarragona.

The President of the Parisian centre, Alain Seban, compared Albert Serra’s work to that of Salvador Dalí, who he said was “another brilliant Catalan”. The Pompidou Centre will show Serra’s films, including his most recent one: ‘The three little pigs’ (2012), which is an experiment on Goethe, Hitler and Fassbinder and lasts 101 hours. ‘Honor de cavalleria’ (‘Knighthood honour’ in English, from 2006) and ‘El cant dels ocells’ (‘Song of the birds’, from 2008) will also be shown. The exhibition will run in the French capital from the 17th of April to the 12th of May. In addition, the Parisian museum will organise debates, such as the one on bullfighting with Serra and the painter Miquel Barceló.

CaixaForum Girona, the social and cultural centre of “La Caixa” savings bank in the Catalan city of Girona played host to 131,158 visitors in its second year of existence. Among the different activities that took place during last year, the exhibitions registered the biggest affluence of visitors, followed by educational activities, concerts, family activities, conferences and social projects. The exhibitions dedicated to Monet, Gauguin, Rusiñol and Sunyer, the maternity photographs of Bru Rovira and the Louvre’s Egyptian collection were the most popular activities.

The Contemporary Art Museum of Barcelona (MACBA) increased its number of visitors by 2.8% in 2012 with respect to the previous year. In 2011 the museum received the visit of 690,865 people, while in 2012 this figure grew to 710,435 visitors. The most visited exhibition has been ‘Oferta pública/Public Tender’ by Rita McBride with a total of 188,028 spectators.

The French Arts Centre is organising one of the largest and most complete retrospective exhibitions on the Catalan artist. 33 years ago, when Dalí was still alive, the Centre Pompidou held a retrospective of his work. In the 2012 exhibition, which will run until the 25th of March 2013, it is claimed that Dalí is one of the most influential artists ever, who not only shaped surrealism but also pop art. The exhibition is full of masterpieces, such as the soft and melting pocket watches of The Persistence of Memory (1931), The Great Masturbator (1929) and Mae West’s room, shown in the Dalí museum in Figueres.

The new exhibition of the Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), ‘Critical Episodes (1957-2011)’, shows the last decades’ deep and historical changes through art. This exhibition is the result of a new arrangement of the MACBA’s collection. It displays about 200 works by 64 artists such as Eduardo Chillida, Hans Haacke, Mike Kelley, Antoni Tàpies, Jaume Plensa, Susana Solano and Oriol Vilapuig, amongst others. MACBA’s Director, Bartomeu Marí, has highlighted that this new exhibition “brings out new works and others that were displayed a long time ago”. It also proves that MACBA’s collection is already “rich, mature and diverse”.