art

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 Catalan capital hosts the Mies van der Rohe Foundation, which delivers this award with the European Commission every two years. Reykjavik’s new Concert Hall and Conference Centre ‘The Harp’, designed by Henning Larsen Architects, Studio Olafur Eliasson and Batterrío, won the 2013 Mies van der Rohe Award, which comes with €60,000 and a small sculpture reproducing the pavilion created by the German architect in Barcelona. In addition, the Spanish architects María Langarita and Víctor Navarro won the Special Mention Award for Young Talent for their music academy in Madrid’s former slaughterhouse (Matadero). The award ceremony took place in Barcelona’s Mies van der Rohe pavilion, in Montjuic.

The Palazzo Fortuny presents an exhibition that explores the Catalan artist’s work as well as his own private collections. The exhibition, ‘Tàpies. Lo sguardo dell’artista’ (Tàpies. The view of the artist), opens in June and visitors will be able to enjoy it until November. The show is part of the Biennale of Contemporary Art in Venice, and is curated by the son of the artist, Toni Tàpies, along with Natasha Hëbert, Daniela Ferreti and Axel Vervoordt.

The world’s number one restaurant with three Michelin stars, has launched a new project called ‘El Somni’ (the Dream). The Dream of the restaurant El Celler de Can Roca is a project with the aim of bringing “a feelings explosion” to their guests. To do this, they have created a whole experience dinner which carefully combines cuisine, wine, audiovisual sources in 3D, live music and direct interaction with the diner. Only 12 exclusive guests will be able to feel The Dream. The dinner took place on the 6th May at the Arts Santa Mónica (Barcelona) but the Roca brothers want to export this idea to another 12 countries in two years’ time.

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.

The David Campos Ballet company, famous for combining classical ballet with contemporary dance, is the latest victim of the crisis that is asphyxiating cultural projects and, in particular, those related to classical dance. On Sunday, the company created and directed by David Campos performed its last show on stage, after 25 years of work at an international level, a representation of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ in Terrassa, Greater Barcelona. The ballet director lamented that dance is “the last echelon of culture” in this country, despite it being “an active genre” that fills up theatres with rejuvenated audiences.

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 three Dalí museums managed by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation were visited by 1.46 million people, 1.82% more visitors than in 2011. The Teatre Museu Dalí in Figueres, the Gala Dalí castle in Púbol and the Salvador Dalí house in Portlligat, all exhibit the work of the most important figure of Surrealism and represent a key tourism attraction for Catalonia and for the Costa Brava area.

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”.

MiRA, the Music and Audiovisual Research Festival of Barcelona, merges electronic music and visual arts with artists such as Lone, Actress, Dan Tombs, Julien Mier, Hyetal, Actop, Gnomalab and the Desilence Studio. The MiRA festival has been organised for a second year, after a very successful first event. Hosted in the former Fabra i Coats factory, this year the festival will increase its offerings and double the number of related workshops. The festival is Barcelona’s autumn’s must-see event for electronic music fans and visual arts lovers.

A journey around the world through art. This is the aim of the new museum in Barcelona, the Museum of World Cultures, which will open its doors in June 2014 in two gothic palaces in front of the Picasso Museum. This new cultural offer in the capital of Catalonia will host art pieces from non-western collections of the Ethnological Museum of Barcelona and private collections, mainly from Folch’s collection which was given to the City Council in 2011. The Museum of World Cultures will display about 700 pieces from Asia, Africa, America and Oceania in permanent and temporary exhibitions. It will also host an educational area. The museum will occupy an area of 2,100 square meters and will cost approximately €5 million.

The Fundació Joan Miró, located in the Catalan capital, unveils a temporary exhibition called “Explosion! The legacy of Jackson Pollock”, which shows the influence Pollock’s works had on later artists. The temporary exhibition is made up of 70 works from 35 different artists, such as Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Shozo Simamoto, Yoko Ono and Jackson Pollock himself. The exhibition is co-produced by Barcelona’s Miró Foundation and the Moderna Museet from Stockholm. It will run until 24th February 2013.

The old Fabra i Coats industrial complex in Barcelona hosts a new centre for Contemporary Art in Catalonia in one of its buildings. The industrial complex is also hosting the ‘Creation Factory’, a socialization space for artists, where they can work on new projects. The Contemporary Art centre was unveiled with the first exhibition called ‘Això no és una exposició d’art, tampoc’ (‘This is not an art exhibition, either’) based on ‘performance’. The whole project, which at the moment uses 600 square metres on the ground floor, will occupy a total of 2,450 square metres of exhibition space - three floors in the front wing of the old factory.