An exhibition on Barcelona’s Sagrada Família Basilica and Antoni Gaudí’s architectural techniques are on show in the Vatican. It focuses on the art, science and spirituality displayed at the Catalan architect’s church. Pope Benedict XVI declared the Sagrada Família a basilica one year ago during a visit to Barcelona. At the time he commented on the beauty of the temple and spoke of his personal admiration for the work of Gaudí.
The Fumanya palaeontological site, located in the northern Catalan County of Berguerà, has one of the most important collections of dinosaur fossils in Europe. The remains of more than 3,500 footprints, as well as bones, eggs, and other remains were discovered accidentally in 1985. Between the years 2000 and 2008, the palaeontological site was analysed and tourist visits have since been organised. Furthermore, in 2012, the site’s new information centre will open its doors to the public and will explain dinosaurs in great detail.
‘Castells’ or the traditional human towers originally from Southern Catalonia and generally built during town festivals were included in the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO last year. An exhibition at the Palau Robert in Barcelona will celebrate this first anniversary. It reflects on the tradition’s cultural and social value, and its role as one of Catalonia’s best known symbols.
China, Japan, Philippines and Malaysia are some of the countries that will host the exhibition ‘The Turn of the Century in Spanish Contemporary Art’, formed by works from the Barcelona Contemporary Art Museum (MACBA) and the foundation of the Catalan savings bank ‘La Caixa’. The collection of both entities consists of 5.500 artworks and is considered one of the most important compilations in Southern Europe. The exhibition touring in Asia will include artworks from Spanish sculptors and painters like Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida or Miquel Barceló, from the last 50 years.
Perajaume is one of the main Catalan artists of our time, part of a generation that is already gaining a lot of international recognition, with artist’s such as Jaume Plensa. Perajaume is known for his landscape visual poetry, expressing the excess of the current times and exhorting the return to natural roots. The exhibition is not a conventional retrospective, but instead a “programmatic proclamation”, an element of reflection on the function, the limits and the fate of art when opposed to excess.
The photography exhibition shows the pictures that were found in the so-called ‘Mexican suitcase’, in which original films by Capa, Taro and Seymour had been kept for decades. The exhibition displays not only pictures from the Spanish Civil War, but also the negatives and the manner in which photographers worked. Since the suitcase kept the original films, the contact sheets can be displayed and thus the photos are shown in the order they were taken.
"Other Egypt" brings together over 200 pieces formally preserved in the Louvre, many of which had not never left Paris since their arrival. The exhibition pictures the Christian heritage of Egypt; from the Roman times to the Arab conquest in the 7th century, Egypt was a Christian country.
The German Pforzheim School has been invited this year in the Week of Contemporary Jewelry of Barcelona. Twenty designers and five galleries are participating.
The 5,000 years old funerary monument which is unique within the Iberian Peninsula will be open to visitors in 2012.
The European Museum of Art houses 20th and 21st Century figurative paintings and sculptures from all over the world. It is located in Barcelona’s Palau Gomis, next to the Picasso Museum. The MEAM belongs to a private institution and aims at becoming a reference within European figurative art’s landscape.
Catalonia’s National Museum of Art (MNAC) hosts the most important collection of Romanesque art in the world. It displays works from the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries, and some mural painting ensembles that are unique. After half a year of intense renovation, the Romanesque collection is on show again, with a new narrative.
The MACBA is one of the main European centres for having the work of Matta-Clark. The MACBA Foundation has now received a unique and new collection of Matta-Clark’s work. In 2012, it will hold a temporary exhibition with the work of the American artist, famous for his deconstruction pieces and ‘building cuts’ in the 1970s.
An exhibition on the rise and fall of the Catalan industrial and financial bourgeoisie in the 19th century titled ‘Gold Fever’ inaugurates the new CaixaForum in Girona. After the merger with La Caixa, the cultural centre of the former savings bank Caixa Girona has been transformed into the new CaixaForum.
A special exhibition is showing Pablo Picasso’s art with lithography, a printmaking technique he explored. Picasso made a total of 450 pieces using this craft, which he revolutionised. The museum in Barcelona already owns 300 of them.
The convention is celebrating its 29th edition. It hopes to gather a total of 100,000 comic fans during the four-day fair. This year the largest exhibition is devoted to creatures of the living-dead.