Great art in sight

Pi­casso the king

It will be dif­fi­cult to out­shine Pi­casso this year. The 50th an­niver­sary of his death has an in­ter­na­tional di­men­sion, but in Barcelona the big event will be Miró-Pi­casso (Oct 19-Feb 25), at the two artists’ re­spec­tive mu­se­ums, ex­plor­ing their re­la­tion­ship. Both artists will fea­ture in an ex­hi­bi­tion at the Palau Foun­da­tion in Caldes d’Es­trac (Apr 29-Sep 24), with a dis­play of pho­tographs by Jean Marie del Moral of two of the land­scapes that in­flu­enced them: Horta de Sant Joan in Pi­casso’s case and Mont-roig del Camp for Miró. A re­turn visit to the Caldes d’Es­trac gallery is a must in the au­tumn for an ex­hi­bi­tion on how Pi­casso was seen by Cata­lan artists. Pi­casso will also be the sub­ject of an ex­hi­bi­tion at Barcelona’s Mu­seum of De­sign (Jun 21-Sep 17), which will shine the spot­light on some of the artist’s ce­ramic works.

The Dalí The­atre and Mu­seum in Figueres will host a major event in au­tumn when it dis­plays for the first time one of the artist’s key works: Christ of Saint John of the Cross. The paint­ing has been part of the col­lec­tion of the Kelv­in­grove Art Gallery in Glas­gow since 1952, and since ar­riv­ing in Scot­land has never re­turned to Spain.

Women artists

Until re­cently, art by women made up only a tiny per­cent­age of most ex­hi­bi­tions. Things have changed, and not to be missed in 2023 at the Barcelona Mu­seum of Con­tem­po­rary Art (Macba) is an ex­hi­bi­tion of the work of the pi­o­neer of land art, Nancy Holt (Jun 29-Oct 29). Mean­while, the Vila Casas Foun­da­tion’s Es­pais Volart will si­mul­ta­ne­ously shine a spot­light on Fina Mi­ralles and Maria Girona (Sep 15-Jan 14). Not to be over­looked is the work of pho­tog­ra­phers Ilse Bing and Tina Mod­otti, at the KBr Barcelona Photo Cen­tre (Feb 15-May 14 & Jun 6-Sep 3), nor the group of women artists who do­nated works to the Avui art archive at the Girona Art Mu­seum (Feb to Dec). Mean­while, Car­men Calvo’s work can be seen at the Pi­casso Mu­seum (from Apr 13), that of Eugènia Bal­cells at the Cer­dany­ola Art Mu­seum (Mar 8-Aug 31), while that of Eva Lootz will be on dis­play at the Suñol Foun­da­tion (Sep to Jan).

Sadism and De Sade

The con­tro­ver­sial Mar­quis is the star of the CCCB’s 2023 pro­gramme. Sade: Free­dom or evil (May 10-Oct 15) will ex­plore the legacy of the in­fa­mous lib­er­tine writer to show how his trans­gres­sive phi­los­o­phy and rev­o­lu­tion­ary mes­sage has in­flu­enced cul­tural cre­ation in the past hun­dred years since the sur­re­al­ists res­cued him from obliv­ion.

Plensa and López

The work of what many call the most in­ter­na­tional Cata­lan artist will fea­ture in an ex­hi­bi­tion at La Pe­dr­era. Po­etry of Si­lence (Mar 31-Jul 23) ex­plores sculp­tor Jaume Plensa’s links with lit­er­a­ture and lan­guage. The iconic Gaudí build­ing will also host the first major solo ex­hi­bi­tion in Barcelona of artist An­to­nio López (Sep 22-Jan 14).

Me­dieval gems

It is strange that ex­hi­bi­tions of me­dieval art are so rare in Cata­lan mu­se­ums when the coun­try boasts of a wealth of trea­sures from the Mid­dle Ages. That is set to change this year. The MNAC na­tional art gallery will host the work of one of the great stars of Gothic paint­ing, Lluís Bor­rassà (Feb 23-Jul 2). Mean­while, in the ex­hi­bi­tion Beasts (Mar 24-Dec 17), the Epis­co­pal Mu­seum of Vic will analyse the abun­dant pres­ence of an­i­mals in me­dieval art­work and re­veal their sym­bolic mean­ings.

Even less com­monly seen in ex­hi­bi­tions are ex­am­ples of art from the Cata­lan Baroque. Yet from May, the Dioce­san and County Mu­seum of Sol­sona will host Against the Baroque, show­ing the final mo­ments of this artis­tic style as a major move­ment.

De­coloni­sa­tion

What would the world be like if Eu­rope had never ex­isted? The legacy of im­pe­ri­al­ism per­me­ates the ex­hi­bi­tion Cimar­ron Anti-Fu­tur­ism (Oct 12- Jan 31), which aims to act as a loud­speaker for artis­tic ac­tivism com­mit­ted to de­coloni­sa­tion at the Vir­reina Image Cen­tre and the Santa Mònica arts cen­tres.

What is it good for?

The Born Cen­tre for Cul­ture and Mem­ory is en­trust­ing its most am­bi­tious ex­hi­bi­tions this year to con­tem­po­rary artists. The ex­hi­bi­tion Why war? (from Nov), which will fea­ture the work of 10 cre­ators, takes its title from a let­ter be­tween Al­bert Ein­stein and Sig­mund Freud on the in­evitabil­ity of war. The cen­tre will also dis­play a spe­cially cre­ated large-for­mat work by Barcelona-born artist Francesc Tor­res in its lobby.

A look in the mir­ror

The human face and body are among the most rep­re­sented mo­tifs in the his­tory of art, and they are the sub­ject to be ex­plored in The Human Image (Jul 4-Oct 22), which Caix­aFo­rum has pro­duced with one of its pres­ti­gious col­lab­o­ra­tors, the British Mu­seum.

And so much more...

There is so much art this year it is im­pos­si­ble to list it all here. Some no­table men­tions in­clude the joint pro­ject be­tween the Girona Art Mu­seum and the Mu­seum of Em­pordà in Figueres on the dis­cov­ery of the Costa Brava by artists from the end of the 19th cen­tury to the out­break of war in 1936 (Apr-Sep).

Mean­while, Caix­aFo­rum Barcelona will dis­play 19th cen­tury por­traits from the col­lec­tion of Madrid’s Prado gallery (Feb 15-Jun 14), Joan Brossa’s con­cept of “parathe­atre” will fea­ture at the Lib­eral Arts Cen­tre of the Brossa Foun­da­tion (Mar 15-Jul 16), Zush in Ibiza is the sub­ject at the Suñol Foun­da­tion (Jan 27-May 20), while Marx­ist John Berger fea­tures at La Vir­reina (May 12-Oct 15).

Other ex­hi­bi­tions in­clude Car­los Pazos at Can Framis (Feb 7-Jun 4), graf­fiti artist Tvboy at Dis­seny Hub Barcelona (Jul 5-Sep 10), a trip to the old Mu­seum of Re­pro­duc­tions in Barcelona, opened in 1891, in the Sit­ges Mu­se­ums (Nov 3-Apr 28), and the cycle of shows at the Abelló Mu­seum in Mol­let for the cen­te­nary of its founder, col­lec­tor Joan Abelló.