Curator: Ricard Mas
Congratulations! If you’re reading this text (and you’re not an artificial intelligence) it means you’re still breathing. So far… because living means inhabiting the brief time between birth and death.
Art is inseparable from human expression. It reveals to us the innumerable discourses and reflections of the soul regarding its limits. This online exhibition is, therefore, limited to showing a few cases from the infinite variety of ways of portraying death, through works of a very different nature, most of which can be visited publicly in the 22 institutions that make up the Art Museums Network of Catalonia.
The people depicted in these works are no longer breathing. Neither are the artists who created them. But they still talk to us. And they ask us a question that goes beyond our concern for finiteness: Am I?
Afraid to Die
The fear of dying keeps us alive. Numerous elements remind us of our finiteness, the most characteristic of which is the skull. Skulls have no face and materialise the loss of identity
Antonio Rafael Mengs: Prayer in the Garden, 1774-1776. Oil on wood, 185 x 185 cm. Lleida Diocesan and County Museum. © Museu de Lleida. Photo: Jordi V. Pou.
Mengs: Prayer in the Garden
Jesus, both human and divine, aware of his destiny, tells his followers “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death” (Matthew 14:38) and retires to pray in solitude. He asks God up to three times, “Take this cup from me”, but finally accepts his destiny.
Pablo Picasso. Memento mori, Oil on canvas glued to cardboard, 24 x 37.8 cm. Palau Foundation, Caldes d’Estrac.
Picasso: Memento mori
Saint Bruno, founder of the Carthusian monastic order, is depicted holding a skull. The Carthusian monks recalled their mortal condition every day. The young Picasso, obsessed with death, attaches more importance to the skull, which was real, than to the saint, a bust.
Anonymous. Untitled, 19th century. Oil on canvas glued to sawn wood, 267 x 96 x 9 cm. Manresa County Museum. © CRBMC Centre de Restauració de Béns Mobles de Catalunya.
Untitled
Emblem that is part of a novena (prayers offered on nine consecutive days for a deceased person), in this case, on the limits of medicine: “It is useless for science / To dictate remedies and medicines / That in those critical moments / Neither knowledge nor experience is valid.”
Darío de Regoyos. Víctimas de la fiesta, 1894. Ink and grattage on paper, 31 x 45 cm. Abelló Museum, Mollet del Vallès.
De Regoyos: Victims of the Festival
A harsh criticism of bullfighting. If you lived in the country, the first notion of what would happen to a decaying body often came from seeing dead horses abandoned in the open air. Hence the aesthetics of putrefaction among the first avant-garde artists.
In War
After pandemics, war is the leading cause of mass death. Unfortunately, the evolution of science, instead of favouring the human condition, has made it much worse by placing itself at the service of war. The two World Wars are a paradigmatic case of this.
Julio Antonio. Planned Monument to the Heroes of Tarragona, 1916. Bronze, 134 x 69 x 50 cm. Tarragona Museum of Modern Art.
Julio Antonio: Planned Monument to the Heroes of Tarragona
A tribute to the people of Tarragona who resisted the Napoleonic occupation in 1811. The city of Tarragona is holding – in the manner of the Christian “Descents” – one of its dead children. The modern nation-state, born in the wake of the French Revolution, gives meaning to patriotic sacrifices.
Marian Vayreda i Vila. Fighting in the Square, c. 1876. Oil on canvas, 29 x 46 cm. Museum of La Garrotxa, Olot.
Vayreda: Fighting in the Square
This early work was probably inspired by the artist’s own experiences during the Third Carlist War (1872-1876). It is interesting to note that, given the inaccuracy of the firearms of the time, the opposing forces confronted each other without taking cover.
Feliu Elias. The Walk of Death in Disguise, 1913. Ink and gouache on paper, 25 x 32 cm. Abelló Museum, Mollet del Vallès.
Elias: The Walk of Death in Disguise
The First World War was not difficult to predict. This joke, published in L’Esquella de la Torratxa in 1913, was entitled: “Germany … Here is the enemy”. An apocalyptic Kaiser is saying “The day I get up in a bad mood … there won’t be a rat left in Europe to tell the story.”
Apel·les Fenosa. Lleida, Bronze, 43,5 x 43,5 x 40,5 cm. Fundació Apel·les Fenosa, El Vendrell.
Fenosa: Lleida
A partir de la primera guerra mundial, la població civil esdevé objectiu militar prioritari. Aquesta pietat contemporània, possiblement inspirada en una foto d’Agustí Centelles, fou concebuda arran del terrible bombardeig de Lleida per la Legió Còndor el 2 de novembre del 1937
With Great Drama
There are works that focus intensively on attracting attention. They are sensationalist, outrageous and intensely dramatic. They are scenic paintings from which one can imagine a certain narrative. And there is nothing more dramatic than a well-tied death.
Antoni Coll Pi, See You Later, Oil on canvas, 145 x 217 cm. Sabadell Museum of Art.
Coll Pi: See You Later
This genre painting was acquired by Sabadell City Council. The coffin and white flowers indicate a child’s death, the father is saying goodbye while the undertaker has broken the niche to make space. The official holding the coffin lid looks away discreetly.
Josep Masana. Between Life and Death, 1920-1940 (edition around 1957-1960). Photograph coloured with the Flexichrome process, 16 x 19.2 cm. National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona.
Masana: Between Life and Death
A mysterious coloured photograph that illustrates a popular saying. A naked young woman struggles between life (the old doctor who takes her pulse) and death (the skeleton that wants to take her). It is also an enviable opportunity to marry Eros and Thanatos, desire and death.
Josep Berga i Boada. Such Are the Consequences… (the stabbing), between 1900 and 1907. Plaster, 100 x 51 x 60 cm. Museum of La Garrotxa, Olot.
Berga i Boada: Such Are the Consequences… (the stabbing)
The central part of a triptych of customs on gender violence: infidelity at a dance, a stabbing in the home, and an abandoned child. The title, as if it were a tango, alludes to fate, but with moralising connotations.
Joan Vilatobà Fígols. Where in Heaven Will I Find You?, c. 1904-1905. Tinted bromide paper, 62.5 x 93.5 cm. Sabadell Museum of Art.
Vilatobà: Where in Heaven Will I Find You?
Pictorialist photographer and spiritualist activist, Joan Vilatobà from Sabadell achieved critical success with this work, apparently about the terrible loss of a daughter, but which does not avoid surprising erotic connotations.
Beheading of a Woman, 18th-19th centuries. Woodcut, 7.5 x 11.5 x 2 cm. Girona Provincial Government Art Collection, Girona Museum of Art. Photo: Rafel Bosch.
Beheading of a Woman
Prior to the industrial revolution, “cordel literature” were the most similar form of communication to the mass media. They were narrative poems recited or sung by a person, often blind, and sold in printed folds topped by a woodcut engraving. Many of the subjects involved blood and guts.
Desiring
The twinning of desire and death became fashionable in Europe during Romanticism. Giacomo Leopardi wrote: “Fratelli, a un tempo stesso, Amore e Morte / Ingenerò la sorte” (Brothers, at the same time, Love and Death / were engendered by destiny). Later, Freud theorised about the two great human desires: that which leads to death and that which drives life, including sexuality.
Francisco Pradilla y Ortiz. Doña Juana la Loca (sketch), 1877. Oil on canvas, 38.6 x 59.1 cm. Jaume Morera Museum of Art, Lleida.
Pradilla: Doña Juana la Loca (sketch)
Queen Joan of Castile went mad after the sudden death in 1506 of her husband, Philip of Habsburg. Between Burgos, where he died, and Granada, where he was to be buried, the entourage only travelled at night. She never left the coffin and at every stop she kissed her dead husband’s feet.
Ismael Smith. Salomé dancing, Nova York, 17/12/1924. Pencil and ink on paper, 44 x 35 cm. Donated by Enrique García-Herráiz in memory of Paco Smith. Cerdanyola Museum of Art.
Smith: Salomé dancing
Lethal birthday. As an act of revenge explained in the Synoptic Gospels, transformed by Oscar Wilde into a delusion of eroticism and death, Salome ends up kissing the decapitated face of John the Baptist. Freud related decapitation to castration. And Smith erases Salome’s genitals.
Joan Rabascall. Atomic Kiss, 1968. Acrylic on canvas, 162 x 97 cm. MACBA Collection. On loan from Barcelona City Council. © Joan Rabascall, VEGAP, Barcelona. MACBA, Barcelona.
Rabascall: Atomic Kiss
To understand this update of the kiss of death, you need to be at least a “boomer”. Only those who lived through the half a century of the “balance of terror” between the confronting blocs led by the United States of America and the Soviet Union, can understand this apocalyptic anguish.
Nazario. Turandot, 1992. Ink and gouache on paper, 44 x 35 cm. Generalitat of Catalonia National Art Collection, Cerdanyola Museum of Art.
Nazario: Turandot
Illustration for the comic Turandot based on the eponymous opera by Puccini. Any man wishing to marry the Chinese princess Turandot has to answer three riddles posed by her. If he fails, he will be beheaded. The first victim is a Persian prince.
Memorably
Some deaths are particularly famous. Most are myths, legends and religious milestones. One of the consequences of death may be oblivion, but in these cases the narrative is so powerful that it has endured for millennia.
Joan Massanet Juli. Pantocrator, 1929. Painting on board, 39 x 49 cm. Museum of L’Empordà, Figueres.
Massanet: Pantocràtor
With a misleading title – there is no Pantocrator – this composition evokes a storehouse of crucifixes and mannequins in an avant-garde style synthesising De Chirico’s metaphysics and surrealism. The death of Jesus, through mediaeval fragments that do not spare the blood.
Lluís Borrassà. Panel of “The Slaughter of the Innocent”, from the Franciscan altarpiece of the old convent of Santa Clara in Vic, 1414-1415. Tempera painting on wood, 130 x 128 cm. Episcopal Museum of Vic.
Borrassà: Panel of “The Slaughter of the Innocent”
According to Matthew 2:16, King Herod, having been told by the Magi that the birth of Jesus could pose a threat, “gave orders to kill all male children aged two and under in Bethlehem and all its territory”. The placidity on the faces of the victims contrasts with the abundant blood.
Josep Ginés. The Innocent Saints, Polychrome carving, 26.5 x 24 x 21 cm. Frederic Marès Museum, Barcelona.
Ginés: The Innocent Saints
An especially violent and unusual version of the Massacre of the Innocents, in which the mothers, empowered and angry, respond with all their might to the assassins sent by King Herod. Part of a series of explicit sculptures on the same subject.
Francesc Sans Cabot. Prometheus, 1858. Oil on canvas, 162 x 162 cm. Jaume Morera Museum of Art, Lleida.
Sans Cabot: Prometheus
Having stolen the fire from Zeus and handed it over to the mortals, the Titan Prometheus was chained to a mountain. Every day, an eagle ate his liver… but, given his immortal status, he regenerated every night. And so eternity would have passed if Heracles had not set him free.
In bed
A bed is not just a piece of furniture to sleep on, it is also a place to be born, to die, to reproduce… and to recover from an ailment. Many creators have discovered their vocation during childhood or adolescence after a long illness that forced them to stay in bed.
Santiago Rusiñol i Prats. Ramon Canudas, Ill in Bed, 1892. Oil on canvas, 16.5 x 25.8 cm. Cau Ferrat Museum, Sitges Heritage Consortium.
Rusiñol: Ramon Canudas, Ill in Bed
The engraver Ramon Canudas was one of Santiago Rusiñol’s best friends. When Canudas fell ill with tuberculosis, he settled in Sitges. There, sentenced by his illness, Rusiñol painted his portrait. The expression on his face shows a man who has accepted his destiny.
Antoni Tàpies. Rinzen (Sudden Awakening), 1992-1993. Various materials, various sizes. MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation. Donation from the Repsol Foundation. © Comissió Tàpies, VEGAP, Barcelona. MACBA, Barcelona. Photo: FotoGasull.
Tàpies: Rinzen (Sudden Awakening)
While recovering from a wasting lung disease at the age of 18, Tàpies rethought his life and discovered his artistic vocation. This enlarged bed on the wall and the chairs that accompany it on the outside invite us to a thought without immovable certainties, where nothing is definitive.
Motu proprio
In ancient classical culture, suicide was often a mechanism for preserving honour and possessions. With the spread of Christianity, the depiction of this practice was largely ignored until Romanticism, when artists once again turned to the subject and even the practice.
Damià Campeny. Lucretia, 1803. Bronze, 131.4 x 66.7 x 130.6 cm. National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona.
Campeny: Lucretia
Lucretia, a Roman noblewoman, was raped by Sextus Tarquinius, son of the last king of Rome. He then gathered his family, told them what had happened and, out of honour, committed suicide. Popular indignation caused the king to flee, which led to the establishment of the Republic.
Decombaz. Pocket Watch. Ginebra, 1780-1820. Copper alloy, engraved and gilded, enamel, steel and glass, 8.9 x 6.5 x 2.4 cm. Barcelona Museum of Design.
Decombaz: Pocket Watch
The most famous suicide of all time was Cleopatra, Pharaoh of Egypt. Married to Mark Antony, she declared war on Octavian’s Rome. Not wishing to be displayed as a trophy on the streets of Rome, she committed suicide. She is depicted being bitten by a viper near her heart.
José Garnelo. Suicide for Love. 1891-1892. Oil on canvas, 132 x 180 cm. Víctor Balaguer Library-Museum, Vilanova i la Geltrú.
Garnelo: Suicide for Love
Intense scenic painting with the suicide victim on the floor, in front of the bed; a picture of the loved one on the table, and the relatives, saddened and perhaps ashamed, reading the farewell letter. The fact that the deceased is a woman may indicate a desperate act to avoid dishonour.
Very Still Lifes
Before the emergence of the various photographic techniques and their common use, people had very few ways of preserving the image of their loved ones once they were no longer with them. Whenever possible, an urgent portrait was drawn or painted.
Francesc Galofré Oller. Dead Child, 1893. Oil on canvas, 37,3 x 53,9 cm. Valls Museum. On loan from Jesus Saumell Zafra, prince of Achaea.
Galofré Oller: Dead Child
In addition to genre, religious and historical paintings, Galofré Oller painted numerous portraits. Infant mortality was very high well into the twentieth century. But what motivated him to portray this dead girl and not use her face to recreate her alive?
Francesc Masriera Manovens. Portrait of the Deceased Elisa Masriera Manovens. 1883. Oil on canvas, 38 x 72 cm. Museum of L’Empordà, Figueres.
Masriera: Portrait of the Deceased Elisa Masriera Manovens
Francesc Masriera painted an urgent portrait of his dead sister by candlelight. The obligatory white flowers indicate purity. The pallor of her face contrasts with her half-open eyes, slight smile and a butterfly, symbol of vital metamorphosis.
Postmortem Portrait of a Girl. 1845-1860. Daguerreotype, 9.5 x 8.2 x 2 cm. Frederic Marès Museum, Barcelona.
Postmortem Portrait of a Girl
With the obligatory whiteness as a symbol of purity in cases of child death, the daguerreotype would replace the painting as an urgent reminder of a deceased person. With the growth of photography, people would have many opportunities to accumulate images and be remembered.
Topographies of memory
Another technique for preserving the memory of the deceased was to make a mask of their face before burying them. In Latin persona is the name given to actors’ masks and is the origin of the word “personality”. The death mask seeks to preserve the exceptionality of an individual who is no longer with us, to summarise an essence in a face.
The Unknown Woman of the Seine, c. 1890-1894. Tinted plaster, 31.2 x 21.6 x 16.2 cm. Cau Ferrat Museum, Sitges Heritage Consortium.
The Unknown Woman of the Seine
The death mask of the most famous unknown victim in history, a girl who is said to have drowned in the Seine. Its deathly beauty caused great interest among artists. Rusiñol had a copy. It is also the face on cardiopulmonary resuscitation mannequins.
Pablo Gargallo. The Mask of Isidre Nonell. 1911. Bronze, 24 x 16 x 12.5 cm. National Art Museum of Catalonia, Barcelona.
Gargallo: The Mask of Isidre Nonell
The number of mortuary masks of artists preserved in the museums of Catalonia is astonishing. In this case, of particular note is the creator, the sculptor Pau Gargallo, and the fact that Nonell died of typhus just after gaining long-denied artistic recognition.
Joan Matamala i Flotats. Màscara mortuòria d’Antoni Gaudí. 1926. Metall i pedra, 30 x 12 x 24 cm. Museu de Reus.
Matamala: Death Mask of Antoni Gaudí
Antoni Gaudí was knocked over by a tram on 7 June 1926. He died three days later in the Hospital de la Santa Creu. Between tears, the young sculptor Joan Matamala made his death mask. Matamala completed the Façade of the Nativity in the Sagrada Família in 1934.
The Cemetery of Art
Museums are sometimes cemeteries in a literal sense, as they house fragments of the dead enclosed in reliquaries, as well as whole corpses, even if they are mummified. In a more symbolic sense, a museum is a mausoleum of artistic legacies. Nevertheless, the canon favoured by museum collections conditions the freedom of contemporary creativity, which is why the futurist Marinetti advocated their destruction.
The Mummy Nesi, c. 656-567 BC. Mummified body bandaged in fabric decorated with polychrome cardboard paste panels with hieroglyphics and mythological scenes, 83 x 19 x 15.5 cm. Víctor Balaguer Library-Museum, Vilanova i la Geltrú.
The Mummy Nesi
Eduard Toda, Catalonia’s Indiana Jones, donated the only Egyptian mummy in Catalonia to the Víctor Balaguer Museum. Nesi is the mummified body of a child of undetermined sex of about five years old. It carries, inscribed, a protection of the goddess Nut and an invocation to Osiris.
Alberto Portella. Reliquary Arm of St. Valerius. c. 1625. Cast and embossed silver arm with a wooden stand. Arm: 63 cm; hand: 19 cm; sleeve: 41 cm; stand: 20 cm. Lleida Diocesan and County Museum. © Museu de Lleida.
Portella: Reliquary Arm of St. Valerius
This silver arm from Roda de Isábena (Huesca) contains a whole forearm bone bearing a sign with the name of Saint Valerius. The remains of this bishop were believed to have arrived in Roda in 1050. They were eventually shared with Zaragoza.
Hortensi Güell i Güell. Cemetery at Dusk. 1892. Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 65.5 cm. Museum of Reus.
Güell: Cemetery at Dusk
Landscape painter and writer, Hortensi Güell was a follower of Modest Urgell’s late Romantic style and his melancholy cemeteries at dusk. Due to a love disappointment, Güell decided to end his life by throwing himself into the sea.
Santiago Rusiñol i Prats. Untitled. 1915. Earthenware with blue, green and yellow enamel, 3 x 27.7 cm. Cau Ferrat Museum, Sitges Heritage Consortium.
Rusiñol: Untitled
Rusiñol mocked everything, even death. In this dish, based on the universe of Senyor Esteve, he denounces the hypocrisy of the survivor. “Wait for me. You unforgettable Esteve” reads the inscription, which contradicts the look of satisfaction on the widower’s face. Let her wait…
Christian Boltanski. Reserve of the Dead Swiss, 1991. Tin boxes, photography in silver salts, cardboard and electric lamps, total dimensions: 288 x 46 x 238 cm; 2380 boxes: 12.1 x 21.8 x 23.3 cm each. MACBA Collection. MACBA Foundation. © Christian Boltanski, VEGAP, Barcelona. MACBA, Barcelona. Photo: FotoGasull.
Boltanski: Reserve of the Dead Swiss
The most mundane bureaucracy also deals with death. Boltanski created a private cemetery/archive based on photographs of the dead taken from the obituary pages of Swiss newspapers. They are normal dead people just like us, which is why they are even more frightening.
Everything that is not dead, but is not alive either…
Can there be life after death? An immaterial existence cannot be described, strictly speaking, as life. So in what words should we describe a life that has crossed the threshold of death? Can an eternal life, free of death, still be called life? What words do not say, perhaps can be read in pictures.
José María Cao Luaces. Get up and smoke (slogan). Cigarrillos París,1900. Tempera, watercolour on paper, 122.5 x 88 cm. Museum of La Garrotxa, Olot.
Cao Luaces: Get up and smoke (slogan). Cigarrillos París
“Lazarus, come forth” (John 11: 43). With this forceful instruction, Jesus resurrected the brother of his friends Martha and Mary. José María Cao makes fun about this famous passage by resurrecting a dead man to whom Jesus offers a Paris brand cigarette.
Antoni Solà. Aeneas and the Sibyl of Cumae visit the Styx. 1801. Painted plaster, 49 x 80 x 15 cm. Frederic Marès Museum, Barcelona.
Solà: Aeneas and the Sibyl of Cumae visit the Styx
According to Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas visited the Sibyl of Cumae on the coast of Campania. Together, they descended to the lake of the Styx and journey to Hades in Charon’s boat, with the aim of visiting the hero’s recently deceased father.
Wall decoration, second half of the 13th century. Fresco painting, 400 x 432.5 x 126 cm. Solsona Diocesan and County Museum.
Wall decoration
The Apocalypse occupies a central position in mediaeval Christian iconography. In the ensemble from Sant Pau de Casserres, the trumpeting angels (four, instead of the obligatory seven) announce Jesus’ return and the resurrection of the dead, prior to the Last Judgment. Fear and hope.