A year of plural art

Cat­alo­nia’s na­tional art gallery, MNAC, will soon begin its long-awaited ex­pan­sion. How­ever, in 2020 it will have to con­tinue to do the ex­cel­lent job it does in mak­ing the most of its ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ties. Among the ex­hi­bi­tions pro­grammed this year is ’Nonell entre tradi­cions. De Goya a Pi­casso’, which runs from May 14 to Sep­tem­ber 13, and which will tackle one of the heavy hit­ters of Cata­lan art: Isidre Nonell. Yet, the ex­hi­bi­tion will ap­proach his work from a dif­fer­ent angle, through the in­flu­ences he ab­sorbed and he him­self had on other artists.

Cat­alo­nia’s main gallery will also begin a new di­a­logue be­tween its his­toric col­lec­tions and the art of today, with painter Oriol Vi­la­puig, whose in­ter­ven­tion ’Son. Em­premtes de les valls d’Àneu’ will run from March 12 to Sep­tem­ber 30.

The end of MNAC’s sea­son will also be pow­er­ful, with a dis­play of the mural paint­ings from the Her­rera Chapel by An­ni­bale Car­racci that have been re­united after years dis­persed through­out the MNAC and El Prado na­tional gal­leries. The his­toric art­works can be seen as a group from Oc­to­ber 24 to Jan­u­ary 24. Mean­while, from No­vem­ber 20 to Jan­u­ary 17, there is the ce­ram­ics ex­hi­bi­tion ’De Hamada a Ar­ti­gas. Els col­ors del foc’, which evokes the re­la­tion­ship be­tween these two mas­ters of clay and their re­spec­tive Japan­ese and Cata­lan cul­tures.

Barcelona’s con­tem­po­rary art gallery, Macba, also has a num­ber of in­ter­est­ing pro­pos­als for the 2020 sea­son, al­though its en­tire pro­gramme has not yet been made pub­lic. ’Acció. Una història pro­vi­sional dels no­ranta’ (Ac­tion. A Pro­vi­sional His­tory of the Nineties) runs from April 3 to Jan­u­ary 27, and delves into the re­vival of con­cep­tual art fol­low­ing the re­turn to con­ven­tional for­mats of paint­ing and sculp­ture in the eight­ies. A new gen­er­a­tion of artists re­vis­ited the prac­tices of the six­ties and sev­en­ties, be­com­ing pre­cur­sors for the likes of Fina Mi­ralles, who this year will fi­nally have an ex­hi­bi­tion at Macba (from May 15 to No­vem­ber 1) de­voted to her life and work.

There are also some gaps in the Pi­casso Mu­seum’s 2020 pro­gramme, al­though one ex­hi­bi­tion an­nounced so far is ’Pi­casso i les joies d’artista’ (Pi­casso and the Artist’s Jew­ellery), from May 8 to Sep­tem­ber 13, which will focus on a lesser known part of his work, his jew­ellery; as al­ways with Pi­casso, it con­sti­tutes more than just or­na­ment.

As for Caix­aFo­rum, the sea­son kicked off with ’Ob­jectes de desig. Sur­re­al­isme i dis­seny 1924-2020’ (Ob­jects of De­sire. Sur­re­al­ism and de­sign 1924-2020), which began in Feb­ru­ary and runs until June 7. The ex­hi­bi­tion brings us fan­tas­ti­cal cre­ations by the likes of Sal­vador Dalí, Björk, Mar­cel Duchamp and Meret Op­pen­heim. Mean­while, in spring, the in­sti­tu­tion’s al­liance with Spain’s El Prado na­tional gallery bears fruit with the ex­hi­bi­tion ’Art i mite. Els déus d’El Prado’ (Art and Myth. The Gods of El Prado). Run­ning from April 15 to Au­gust 26, it pro­vides a Greco-Latin mytho­log­i­cal feast with paint­ings by Rubens, Rib­era and Zur­barán, among oth­ers. Yet, what could well turn out to be the ex­hi­bi­tion of the year, or at least one of the most pop­u­lar, is ’Vam­pirs. L’evolució del mite’ (Vam­pires. The Evo­lu­tion of the Myth), which will ex­plain the ob­ses­sion with these mon­sters in cul­ture from July 8 to Oc­to­ber 25.

The Miró Foun­da­tion began the year with artist An­toni Llena se­lect­ing 150 Miró draw­ings for dis­play in an ex­hi­bi­tion that will run until June 7, con­tin­u­ing with mil­i­tant fem­i­nism in ’No em sents’ (You Don’t Hear Me), which be­tween March 20 and Sep­tem­ber 29 fea­tures the work of In­dian artist Nalini Malani, who won the 2019 Joan Miró Prize. The foun­da­tion’s year will come to a close in the au­tumn with an ex­hi­bi­tion on sculp­ture cu­rated by sculp­tor David Bestué, with work from the likes of Eva Hesse, Con­stan­tin Bran­cusi and Su­sana Solano.

South African William Ken­tridge will be the focus at Barcelona’s cen­tre of con­tem­po­rary cul­ture, the CCCB, from June 10 until No­vem­ber 22, while ’Mart: el mi­rall ver­mell’ (Mars. The Red Mir­ror) looks at the Red Planet from dif­fer­ent ap­proaches and dis­ci­plines to re­flect on hu­man­ity’s fu­ture from No­vem­ber 24 to April 25.

La Pe­dr­era hosts the work of two key fig­ures: New York pho­tog­ra­pher William Klein, who was a pi­o­neer of street pho­tog­ra­phy, from March 6 to July 5, and Va­len­cian sculp­tor An­dreu Al­faro, who died in 2012.

Klein will not be only the pho­tog­ra­pher on show this year, as pho­tog­ra­phy con­tin­ues to gain ever more ground, and es­pe­cially this year as the Mapfre Foun­da­tion in June be­gins its new phase as a cen­tre ex­clu­sively ded­i­cated to pho­tog­ra­phy in its build­ing in the tow­ers on Barcelona’s seafront. How­ever, be­fore that, and until May 17 in its cur­rent HQ, the mod­ernist Casa Gar­riga Nogués, we can find an ex­hi­bi­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy by Car­los Pérez Siquier, win­ner of the Na­tional Pho­tog­ra­phy Prize in 2003. The new site will open with two si­mul­ta­ne­ous ex­hi­bi­tions: on Bill Brandt, one of the fa­thers of mod­ern pho­tog­ra­phy, and on Paul Strand, an­other major ref­er­ence point in the his­tory of the dis­ci­pline. Fol­low­ing them on Oc­to­ber 22 will be a ret­ro­spec­tive of Garry Wino­grand, who rev­o­lu­tionised doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, and a dis­play from MNAC’s archive.

More pho­tog­ra­phy is to be found at the Foto Colecta­nia Foun­da­tion, which be­tween March 12 and June 21 will show off the work of Japan­ese pho­tog­ra­pher Daido Moriyama, win­ner of the Has­sel­blad Award, pho­tog­ra­phy’s Nobel Prize.

The Vir­reina Cen­tre of the Image has yet more pho­tog­ra­phy in a sea­son that kicks off on March 14 with an ex­hi­bi­tion on Amer­i­can writer Susan Son­tag’s book On Pho­tog­ra­phy, which runs until May 17. From March to Sep­tem­ber it is the turn of les­bian film pi­o­neer Bar­bara Ham­mer, with the ex­hi­bi­tion ’Sis­ters!’, while ’Les filles de la ver­gonya’ (The Daugh­ters of Shame) be­gins in May, an in­ves­ti­ga­tion into sex­ual dis­si­dence in Spain’s for­mer colonies. Manolo Laguillo, a lead­ing fig­ure in Span­ish doc­u­men­tary pho­tog­ra­phy, has an ex­hi­bi­tion be­tween June and Oc­to­ber, with the tal­ent of Cata­lan pho­tog­ra­pher Tanit Plana on dis­play be­tween Sep­tem­ber and Oc­to­ber. Ex­hi­bi­tions on film­maker Pedro Costa and painter Hélios Gómez (both Oc­to­ber to Jan­u­ary) bring to an end what is an an­niver­sary year for the cen­tre, which is cel­e­brat­ing 40 years of show­cas­ing con­tem­po­rary art.

The Tàpies Foun­da­tion is also cel­e­brat­ing its 30th an­niver­sary this year, and is plan­ning a big ex­hi­bi­tion of its founder’s work for the sum­mer. How­ever, be­fore that comes ’An­toni Tàpies. L’àcid és el meu ganivet’ (An­toni Tàpies. Acid is My Knife), which fo­cuses on the artist’s ex­per­i­ments in the field of print­mak­ing and will be run­ning until May 24.

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