Curator: Maria Garganté Llanes
Number of works: 55
Museums represented: MACBA, MNAC, Museu d’Art de Cerdanyola, Museu Víctor Balaguer, Museus de Sitges, Museu d’Art de Girona, Museu del Disseny, Fundació Palau, Museu de l’Empordà, Museu de la Garrotxa, Museu d’Art Modern de Tarragona, Museu de Reus, Museu de Valls, Museu Frederic Marès, MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida, Museu Diocesà i Comarcal de Solsona, Museu Apel·les Fenosa, Museu d’Art de Sabadell, Museu Abelló, Museu de Lleida, MEV Museu d’Art Medieval, Museu de Manresa.
Introduction
The objective of this exhibition is to undertake an exercise in “looking” from our post-pandemic present, based on works from a pre-pandemic past. To see how an image as iconic and integrated into our imagination, such as a Last Supper at a Gothic table, for a year and a half became an unimaginable type of meeting or at least one that was frowned on for health and social reasons. Thus, the exhibition will not be based on a mere collection of works of art about parties, social life in bars or dining, but on the fact that all these activities were eliminated from our lives for a quite a long period in our recent history.
Therefore, we begin with the “shock” of being deprived of this type of interaction and also the difficulty of “relating” again. Does the anxiety to make up for lost time coexist with a certain bitter awareness that something has been broken forever? These are some of the questions that underly our look at art through the works we have chosen.
Thinkers such as Georges Bataille or Émile Durkheim defined an eminently social expression like the party as an institution that challenges the anthropological model of homo economicus, given that it pursues only individual interest, whereas a certain a social solidarity derives from every collective celebration. Thus, homo festus (the collective expression of homo ludens) would also be homo socialis.
Ultimately, human interaction always determines the construction of a social reality. That is why our main objective will be for the exhibition itinerary to evoke what the pandemic deprived us of for almost two years and, at the same time, to symbolise the “recovery”, this time without restrictions.
Festive celebrations of a religious nature:
from Corpus Christi to the Festa Major.
Religious festivals have traditionally had a public dimension, expressed in aspects such as processions that, in the case of Corpus Christi or Holy Week , become the central event. The procession had to be a reflection of the maintenance of social order, so it was about involving all the locality’s important social agents in order to create their best “showcase”.
The configuration of these urban retinues corresponds to a model of celebration that regulates and structures the festival: the space is defined by an itinerary along which the festive characters move. It is worth noting that the Church increasingly distanced itself from the presence of the festive entourage in religious processions, so that in the 19th century a separation occurred. This means that today, elements such as giants or mythical bestiary are associated with a more secular concept of Festa Major (patron saint’s day festival). Nevertheless, the most recent recovery of historic festive processions reintegrates them into their original function.
Felip Masó i de Falp. The Procession of Saint Bartholemew, 1884. Oil on canvas, 115 x 218 cm. Museu de Maricel (Sitges), Cau Ferrat Collection.
Felip Masó i de Falp. The Procession of Saint Bartholemew,
This work was presented with the title of The Procession of Saint Bartholemew, whose image can be seen encircled on the left of the composition. However, there are dubious aspects that suggest that the painter created a synthesis between what would have been a procession dedicated to the patron saint of Sitges, accompanied by colourful guild flags, and the great “festival of festivals” that would have been Corpus Christi, given that at the end of the street on the left you can intuit the presence of the monstrance under the canopy. On the right, stick dancers move to the music of the flageolet and spectators watch the entourage from the street or the decorated balconies adorned with damasks.
Lola Anglada. The Moixiganga of Sitges, 1970. Panel of 25 polychrome ceramic tiles, 62 x 68 x 3.5 cm. Museus de Sitges (Vila de Sitges Art Collection).
Lola Anglada: The Moixiganga of Sitges
Lola Anglada had a very intense relationship with Sitges where she lived for two years at the beginning of the 1960s. She maintained a close intellectual link with the town until at least 1975, illustrating several programmes for the Corpus Christi festivities and the Festa Major. In addition to donating her collection of dolls and toys to the town, she made several ceramic panels like this one dedicated to the Moixiganga (a representational folk dance), probably the most characteristic element of the Sitges festive entourage, which includes Giants, a Dragon and Devils, as well as Stick, Hoop and Little Shepherd dances.
Ester Ferrando: Virgin of Mercy Festival, 2007. Poster. Digital print on paper, 36 x 30.5 cm. MAMT, Museu d’Art Modern de Tarragona.
Ester Ferrando: Virgin of Mercy Festival
The Virgin of Mercy is the Marian devotion par excellence and patron saint of the town of Reus. Antoni Gaudí was a great devotee. On the poster for the 2007 saint’s day festival, Ester Ferrando wanted to reproduce the delicate floral motif embroidery on one of the mantles of the image of the Virgin, which are one of its most characteristic elements symbolising a protective mantle for the faithful and which they change according to the liturgical period. The poster, however, was not selected by the town council and the artist produced a limited edition of seventy-five copies.
Modest Urgell i Inglada: Dance of the Giants at Night, last quarter of the 19th century-early 20th Oil on canvas. Museu de la Garrotxa.
Modest Urgell i Inglada: Dance of the Giants at Night
Olot’s giants are among the oldest documented in Catalonia (the giant from 1521 and the giantess from 1609). We believe they were successively renewed throughout the centuries. Ramon Amadeu is credited with remaking the heads at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1889, Miquel Blay made the head of the giant and Celetí Devesa that of the giantess. Modest Urgell painted them parading through one of the narrow streets of Olot old town in a nocturnal atmosphere. The presence of the giants was initially limited to the feast of Corpus Christi, but was later extended to the patron saint festivals that, in Olot, were dedicated to the Virgin of Tura.
Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), Return of “Il Bucintoro” on Ascension Day, 1745-1750. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection on loan to the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 2004. © Picture: Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum.
Giovanni Antonio Canal (Canaletto), Return of “Il Bucintoro” on Ascension Day
This view depicts the festival of the Ascension (or “Sensa”), when a kind of “symbolic union” was staged between Venice and the sea, the source of its prosperity. The ducal vessel Il Bucintoro went out onto the open sea and, once there, the Doge threw a ring into the water as a symbol of alliance. This scene shows the vessel returning to the dock after performing this unique ceremony. Antonio Canal, better known as “Il Canaletto”, was the visual chronicler par excellence of these pageants, which constituted a festive “postcard” of a city that had already lost its 16th-century splendour, but still revelled in sensuality and pleasure, living its particular “swan song” before the Old Regime crumbled.
Oleguer Junyent, Corpus (Girona), 1927. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Purchased at the Barcelona International Exhibition, 1929; entered the collection 1931. Photo: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2023; © The author or his heirs.
Oleguer Junyent, Corpus (Girona)
Oleguer Junyent was a great chronicler who bequeathed us colourful scenes of festive events, leisure activities and markets. In this case we have a privileged view of the magnificent steps of Girona Cathedral as they become the liturgical stage for the departure of the solemn Corpus Christi procession. The first to descend the stairs of the see are the acolytes with the tintinnabulum –a wooden insignia with a bell– and the conopaeum or papal pavilion, which is a kind of conical umbrella with the pontifical colours that serves to protect the tabernacle. Next comes the monstrance under the pali. On either side of the staircase there are spectators who do not want to miss the spectacle, which Oleguer Junyent, as a renowned scenographer, must have particularly valued, even more so as the whole of the cathedral façade and the staircase formed a superb baroque scenography.
Carnival: between Tradition and Transgression.
Carnival or Carnestoltes (“meat off”, if we adapt it from carne levare –remove meat– from the Latin or carnes tollendas, which would have the same meaning), has always been associated with an extreme vitalist sense of “taking advantage”, with the praxis of excess and transgression of the days before the beginning of Lent. The ancestral opportunity to subvert the established order, to “disguise” in the original sense of misleading or leaving no trace; being able to be someone else, being able to turn fate and the world upside down for an instant.
The 2020 Carnival took place very shortly before our world was “shut down”, although Italy, which was the first European country to suffer the ravages of the virus, had already suspended the Venice Carnival that same year, when the country’s northern regions were the most affected. Rio de Janeiro suspended the 2021 carnival, especially the street celebrations, and the Venetian carnival was “streamed”. In our country, the most emblematic carnivals were also affected. Vilanova’s was experienced through social media and the Canal Blau, although the street decoration was not renounced. In Sitges, the processions were cancelled and exhibitions and street decorations were promoted. These were atypical carnivals full of longing for those who experience them intensively every year.
Joaquim Mir: The Comparses of Vilanova, 1925-1926. Oil on canvas, 149 x 201 cm. Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.
Joaquim Mir: The Comparses of Vilanova
Mir settled in Vilanova i la Geltrú when he married a girl from the town, Maria Estadella. This work is part of a series of 16 paintings that decorated the Foment Vilanoví Café and that he made with other artists from the city. From an elevated perspective that suggests it was painted from a balcony, his lively, unfettered brushwork reflects the festive atmosphere of the Plaça de les Cols, when the dancers of the comparses engage in the traditional candy battle, a highlight of one of Catalonia’s most emblematic carnival celebrations. The men wear scarves, waistcoats or jackets specific to each entity, while their female partners wear carnations and the so-called “Manila shawls”. Like almost every party or social event, participation in comparses could also be a magnificent occasion for courtship rituals. It is one of the most extraordinary moments in Vilanova’s festive season.
Josep Badia: Carnival in Sant Pere de Terrassa, 1981. Engraving. Etching, on paper, 39.5 x 51 cm. MAMT, Museu d’Art Modern de Tarragona.
Josep Badia: Carnival in Sant Pere de Terrassa
Seven masked figures, just a little grotesque, seem to be entering stealthily but transgressively into the sacred precinct of the old parish of Sant Pere de Terrassa, today corresponding to the whole of the Seu d’Ègara. The space is bordered by a wall, with a gate presided over by a cross. In the background there is a figure, probably a priest, judging by the black hat and clothing, in contrast to another figure in white that seems also to have entered the compound. The disturbing, stealthy aspect of the characters is aligned with the inclination of the trees.
Giandomenico Tiepolo, The Charlatan, 1756. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Bequest of Francesc Cambó, 1949. © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, .
Giandomenico Tiepolo, The Charlatan
This work is paired with “The Minuet”, both being scenes of customs related to the Venetian carnival, the most famous in all of Europe and which was already well known in the 18th century. Giandomenico Tiepolo painted several works on the subject (some satirical) in which he often featured the archetypal characters of the Commedia dell’arte, all far removed from the grandiloquent muralism of his father, Giambattista Tiepolo.
In this scene, the crowd is gathered round a person who is addressing them from the top of a wooden platform. Both humble and elegant characters, most of them masked, share the same space with the presence of creatures and animals forming a true genre scheme.
In this scene, the crowd is gathered round a person who is addressing them from the top of a wooden platform. Both humble and elegant characters, most of them masked, share the same space with the presence of creatures and animals forming a true genre scheme.
Apel·les Mestres: Invitation to the Latorre Society Ball, 1882. Museu Frederic Marès.
Apel·les Mestres: Invitation to the Latorre Society Ball
That of illustrator was one of Apel·les Mestres’ many artistic facets. In this case he designed the invitation to a masked ball. These were usually organised during Carnival and were the gateway to new fashionable dances in the city, as well as new instruments, such as the saxophone. The Romea i Latorre Society –named after two of the most famous Spanish actors of the 14th century, Julián Romea and Carlos Latorre– was the main organiser of these masked balls. They were mainly held in the Liceu and the so-called Teatro de las Provincias, the latter of which would later be called Romea as a tribute to the actor of the same name.
Joan Brossa, The Joy of the Party, 1989. Metal and paper on wood, 14 x 34.8 x 29.8 cm. MACBA Collection. MACBA Consortium. Joan Brossa Collection. On loan from the Joan Brossa Foundation. © Fundació Joan Brossa, VEGAP, Barcelona. Photo: Martí Gasull.
Joan Brossa, The Joy of the Party
Colourful “streamers” are associated with parties, especially New Year’s Eve and Carnival or masked dances. In this visual poem by Joan Brossa the streamers are piled up on a carpenter’s plane, as if they were wood shavings. Perhaps they evoke the end of the party, which is also the end of the joy, which would also be reduced to shavings, who knows if eventually to end up in the rubbish. Ephemeral serpentines, like the party as an exceptional moment; everything is ephemeral and fleeting, like the joy that passes.
The Joy of Sharing a Table
One of the aspects most affected by the pandemic was the collective meals or get-togethers that involved gathering round a table to share a meal. Such social gatherings had to be reduced to the so-called “bubbles”, which were limited to your closest family or the people with whom you had the closest contact. They could not contain more than six people, except for festive Christmas meals, when ten diners were allowed, although from a maximum of two family bubbles. This led to the cancellation of many Christmas lunches and dinners and consequently there were no passionate family discussions or meals with friends and colleagues for the major holidays. From time to time in the media we read of an occasional transgression of the rules by a clandestine group meal that immediately resulted into a rise in contagion or an increase in admissions to the intensive care wards. Restaurants were closed: initially throughout the day and then at night, when sharing a table normally lasts until the wee hours and we already know the dangers that night-time has always brought in the imaginary of law and order.
Joan Abelló: Friends at Dinner, 1951. Oil on canvas, 146 x 200 cm. Museu Abelló.
Joan Abelló: Friends at Dinner
This work recalls the corporate portraits by the 17th-century Dutch painter Frans Hals of the officers of the Civic Company of St George in Haarlem, especially the one from 1616, in which the characters are shown around a well-stocked table, which could in itself be an excellent example of a still life.Joan Abelló himself is believed to be a member of the group of identifiable characters portrayed. He appears at the bottom right, partially reclining in a chair, holding a glass of wine in one hand while playing with some cherries and his ear with the other, thus creating a curious self-portrait.
Pere Teixidor (attributed): Holy Supper, c. 1450. Painting on board. Museu Diocesà i Comarcal de Solsona.
Pere Teixidor (attributed): Holy Supper
The Bible contains numerous episodes involving communal meals. Just in the New Testament, we find at least three crucial occasions during the life of Christ: the wedding in Canaan, the Holy Supper and the Last Supper before his arrest and crucifixion, or the supper at Emmaus, once he had risen. Of these, the most emblematic is the Last Supper, a motif widely represented in Christian religious iconography from very early times. Although we cannot confirm its exact provenance, this Holy Supper from Santa Constança de Linya is exceptional due to the display of Valencian ceramic tableware depicted in it. This aroused the interest of the great collector of ceramics Guillermo de Osma, who sought, ultimately without success, to purchase it.
Miralda, Holy Food, 1984-1989. Diverse materials. Variable sizes. MACBA Collection. On loan from the Generalitat de Catalunya. National Art Collection. © Miralda, VEGAP, Barcelona. Photo: Rafael Vargas.
Miralda, Holy Food
An installation in which food takes on a sacred nature and occupies a privileged place in each of the seven altars dedicated to the deities of the Yoruba religion –the so-called “Orixàs”– from the West African coast. They are also present in other religious variants of African origin but established in the Americas, such as Candomblé, Umbanda and Batuque. These cults that were taken by slaves to the United States, Cuba, Haiti, Brazil, etc. A common denominator of these transcultural forms is the importance of food in rituality and as one of the most emblematic forms of celebration, here carefully arranged in different objects and receptacles.
Xavier Nogués: Tiles for the Pinell de Brai Winery, c. 1920. Painted glazed tile, 53 x 286 cm. Museu de Valls. Donated by Maria Martinell.
Xavier Nogués: Tiles for the Pinell de Brai Winery
Five men sitting around a table and a sixth standing, apparently drunk and holding on to a tree. It is a meal in the open air, under a vine, with wine is an essential feature; a large wine glass presides over the still life on the table. The work was made to be part of the decoration of the cooperative winery of Pinell de Brai, designed by César Martinell. It is an evocation of the Mediterranean world with the aesthetic of Noucentisme, although with Xavier Nogués’ customary touch of humour and satire.
Passoles Studio (attributed): The Chocolate Party, 1710. Polychrome ceramic tile panel. Museu del Disseny. Photograph: Guillem Fernández-Huerta.
Passoles Studio (attributed): The Chocolate Party
This ceramic panel comes from the Ca les Monges estate in Alella, which the nobleman Francesc Amat i Planella acquired in 1709, in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession. One of the reforms he undertook there was to build the Fountain of Health pavilion, where water gushed from a spring. He had it decorated with a series of panels combining profane and religious motifs. The panels dedicated to the Our Lady of Health and “The Thin” and “The Fat” are still in situ. It is a courtly scene taking place in a contemporary Italian garden or terrace of the time, with its gazebos and a fountain in the middle and where some of the attendees are drinking chocolate around a table. Cacao arrived in Spain from America in the 16th century, then spread to the rest of Europe, although it was not until the 18th century that it became a gastronomic fad, especially among the wealthy classes.
For pleasure. Let’s meet in the open air
When the lockdown measures began to be relaxed, coinciding with the arrival of summer, outdoor gatherings became the most sought-after expression of freedom. In some towns, the opening of swimming pools was postponed and access to beaches was restricted to avoid overcrowding. Social distancing and control measures were imposed and drones were used to ensure they were respected. Young people in particular began to seek alternative spaces to escape this strict control that they perceived as arbitrary. They began to discover waterfalls, streams and ponds where they could meet and cool off. There was a kind of “rediscovery” of the surroundings for recreational purposes, from picnics to nocturnal botellones (outdoor drinking parties), with a single goal: a feeling of freedom.
The selected pictures capture the spirit of enjoying the outdoors, along the lines explained by A. De Saint-Éxupery in Letter to a Hostage (1948): “It was a good sun. Its warmth bathed the poplars on the other bank and the plain, all the way to the horizon. We felt increasing happiness, without knowing why. (…) We were totally at peace, immersed, far from the disorder, in a definitive civilisation.”
Josep Pey, Antoni Serra, Joan Carreras, Afternoon Tea in the Countryside, around 1905-1906. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Purchased in 1967. Photo: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 2023; © Gaspar Salinas Ramon.
Josep Pey, Antoni Serra, Joan Carreras, Afternoon Tea in the Countryside
This work reproduces one of the six mosaic panels –a technique recovered by Modernisme– made for the main hall of Casa Lleó Morera by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. The drawing of the panel was by the painter Josep Pey i Farriol, the plaster models by the sculptor and wood carver Joan Carreras i Farré, and the heads and hands in porcelain bas-relief by the ceramist and painter Antoni Serra i Fiter, all collaborators of furniture maker Gaspar Homar. Afternoon Tea in the Countryside refers to the popularity of the so-called “springs”, one of the most popular of which in the Barcelona area was Collserola. With great decorative spirit, the other panels in the house also reproduced bucolic country scenes populated by the same type of elegantly dressed bourgeois characters. The female figures in this landscape context are somewhat reminiscent of the so-called “Ladies of Cerdanyola” depicted in stained glass.
Josep de Togores i Llach: Three Nudes, 1924. Oil on canvas, 130 x 98 cm. Museu d’Art de Cerdanyola (on loan from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya).
Josep de Togores i Llach: Three Nudes
One of Josep de Togores’ most emblematic works. It was accompanied by controversy due to the fact that it had been rejected by the Board of Museums, which found it immoral (despite it having been acquired by public subscription). Finally, the painting was admitted but with the new, more allegorical title of Spring of Life. It depicts three voluptuous figures (in line with the nineteenth-century ideal of beauty) who are conversing near a tree. We do not know the gender of the figure with their back to us. Is it a man or a woman? This ambiguity, as well as its extraordinary modernity –the hairstyles are from the period– surely contributed to fuelling the controversy about the “immorality” of the work that, on the other hand, evokes a demand for freedom on all levels.
Lluís Trepat i Padró: Nuns on the Beach, 1965. Oil on canvas, 60 x 91.8 cm. MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i contemporani de Lleida collection.
Lluís Trepat i Padró: Nuns on the Beach
Thanks to the energetic brushwork of the painter from Tàrrega, Lluís Trepat, we can watch these nuns strolling by the sea from an elevated position, in the same way as Jep Gambardella contemplates the nuns enjoying themselves in the courtyard of the convent he sees from his Roman terrace in La Grande Bellezza by Paolo Sorrentino. Or the (personal) memory of the distant view of young nuns playing with bales of straw from the recently mowed fields around Cervera. The walk is an evocation of freedom, which was only allowed –and even then for set time slots– after two months of reclusion. Robert Walser writes: “Walking, I answered, is essential for me to revive myself and to maintain contact with the world, […] Without walking and without the contemplation of nature that goes with it, without this search as delightful as it is instructive, I feel lost, and indeed I am.”
Joan Padern i Faig: Lunch on the Grass, 1977. Oil on canvas, 97.5 x 130 cm. Museu de l’Empordà.
Joan Padern i Faig: Lunch on the Grass
Here, Joan Padern paraphrases Manet’s painting (a paradigm of enjoyment à plein air), taking the characters and placing them in a bucolic environment, an immense waste dump, while several skyscrapers emerge in the background. Arcadia lost and exchanged for a disturbing reality, which the painter reflects in other works, also in the Museu de l’Empordà, such as The Drama or Consumer Society (both from 1978). This type of bleak, apocalyptic landscape contrasts with the silence and placidity (but without the warmth) of The Kitchen of Vilamaniscle (1982).
Ángeles Santos Torroella: The Earth, 1929. Oil on canvas, 69 x 83 cm. Museu de l’Empordà.
Ángeles Santos Torroella: The Earth
Painted at the same time as the more famous and celebrated A World, The Earth is also the representation of a planet from the unique perspective of the artist, who pays her particular tribute to The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch. Behind a first impression of biblical bucolicism there is something disturbing in the uniformity of the clothing (dark green for the men, red for the women), the attitude of some of the figures, such as the woman who lies as if she were dead, etc. As in what seems harmonious and even naïve there is room for restlessness: from Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World to Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego. Even so, a couple kisses, another strolls, and others lean on the metal sphere that recalls the lovers in Bosch’s Garden, sitting in a bubble or chrysalis.
Apel·les Fenosa: Metamorphosis of the Sisters of Phaethon, 1950. Bronze, 235 x 152 x 131 cm. Museu Apel·les Fenosa, el Vendrell.
Apel·les Fenosa: Metamorphosis of the Sisters of Phaethon
Fenosa depicts this mythological episode by placing the four female figures in a circle, like the breasts of Four Graces (instead of three). Their raised arms become tree branches that recall other episodes of metamorphosis, such as that of the nymph Daphne, recreated masterfully by Bernini. In any case, if we strip the group of the mythological content of the story, the result is a beautiful feminine evocation (in a group and in a relationship) with nature.
Social leisure. Bars and shows
Bars, the focal point of an important part of social leisure, were among the most missed establishments during the strict lockdown and those on which the focus was placed once the restrictions began to be lifted. Use of the terraces was restricted (no group or table could exceed six people) and night-time opening was not allowed. In short, we experienced the alteration of what some urban planners and sociologists call the “Third Space”, that of socialisation.
On the other hand, “Culture is Safe” was the slogan most repeated by professionals and businesspeople linked to the performing arts. Despite it having been shown that going to the theatre was not a source of contagion –the capacity limitations, social distancing and hygiene measures were scrupulously observed in most cases– it was a sector severely punished by prolonged closures. Why were the scapegoats those spaces where people tend to be happy?
Jaume Pons Martí: The Cafè de la Vila in the Plaça del Vi, Girona, 1877. Museu d’Art de Girona. Girona Provincial Government Collection. Photo: R. Bosch.
Jaume Pons Martí: The Cafè de la Vila in the Plaça del Vi
The interior of an emblematic venue for Girona’s intellectual universe, sadly no longer with us; a place where gatherings were held to discuss the concerns that hovered over the turbulent end of the 19th century. We also note, however, that the male presence constitutes an absolute majority, as was the norm in such settings at that time. The presence of women (at least those who wished to appear “respectable”) in cafes or bars was forbidden, a custom maintained well into the 20th century. In fact, the only woman represented in the whole place is the waitress, already a profession with a more than dubious reputation. In any case, the bar as a meeting place or a refuge was one of the most missed elements during the strictest lockdown of the first months.
Josep Llovera Bufill, Flamenco Dance, 1892-1896. Painting on canvas, 104 x 159 cm, Museu de Reus (on loan from the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya).
Josep Llovera Bufill, Flamenco Dance
The scene depicts a show at the Edén Concert, a “music hall” on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, near Avinguda del Paral·lel, until recently an emblematic area of Barcelona nightlife. This theatre was one of the first of its type, as well as one of the longest surviving. In this case, the show is flamenco dancing. There are several women on stage, dancing and clapping, while one of them is served a drink by a waiter. They are accompanied by musicians playing guitars. Among the audience are soldiers toasting and men and women (some also dressed in flamenco style) laughing and drinking. It should be borne in mind that the presence of women at this type of show –which did not have the “seriousness” of an opera theatre such as the Liceu– led to them being labelled as “morally distracted”, to quote one of the many euphemisms used to describe women who, far from confining themselves to the domestic sphere, transcended it to share male leisure spaces.
Rafael Benet: The Terrace or the Shade, 1946. Oil on canvas, 27 x 35 cm. Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.
Rafael Benet: The Terrace or the Shade
Bar terraces became one of the most coveted places to socialise once the health measures had been relaxed. This scene corresponds to the terrace of the Cafè de’n Biel, an emblematic establishment in Tossa de Mar, where artistic and literary gatherings were organised. Rafael Benet himself defined Tossa as the “Babel of the Arts” and it was where he and others came up with the idea of establishing a museum in the town. It opened on 1 September 1935 and was nourished in part by that cosmopolitan and effervescent artistic atmosphere. Rafael Benet, who was known especially for his theoretical and art critic facet, defined himself as “a painter who writes” and depicted the atmosphere of the Cafe de’n Biel at all hours of the day in numerous paintings.
Xavier Gosé i Rovira: In Montmartre, c. 1908. Graphite pencil and ink on cardboard, 32 x 35 cm. MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida collection.
Xavier Gosé i Rovira: In Montmartre
One of the scenes situated in the Montmartre district depicted by Xavier Gosé, an artist from Lleida who was fascinated by the bohemian and artistic atmosphere of Paris, where he lived from 1900 until the beginning of the Great War. Although in his early days he showed great concern for social and labour issues, his servitude to the type of publications he worked for turned him into a visual chronicler of the elegant Paris of the Belle Époque. He shows us sophisticated women who whitened their faces and exhibited that “spleen” or “vanné” –affected boredom with life or languid melancholy– that Balzac had defined in 1830 in his Treatise on Elegant Life, which would later have such an influence on Baudelaire.
Passoles Studio (attributed): The Bullfight, 1710. Polychrome ceramic tile panel. Museu del Disseny. Photograph: Guillem Fernández-Huerta.
Passoles Studio (attributed): The Bullfight
Like the one in The Chocolate Party, this ceramic panel dated to around 1710, in the midst of the War of the Spanish Succession, also comes from the Font de la Salut d’Alella on the Ca les Monges estate that was acquired by Francesc Amat i Planella. Some of the panels are preserved in situ. In this case, the scene of a profane and playful nature that depicts a bullfight, a type of spectacle that Felipe V of Bourbon abhorred and even wanted to ban from the court. The scene was hypothetically located in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, with the Casa de la Panadería in the centre.Bullfights as a mass spectacle, especially in the urban context, could arouse great passion. On 25 July 1835, an afternoon of inadequate bulls in the Barceloneta (together with the riots of Reus) resulted in disturbances that culminated in the burning of convents.
Public Privacy. Rites of Society
Among the social rituals most affected by the pandemic were weddings, which are still one of the quintessential family events that involve showing off in society, not only to the extended family, but also to friends. The wedding, moreover, consists of different parts, all of which were prohibited during the strictest moments of lockdown: the ceremony (civil or religious), the banquet and the dance. Some media spoke of the “emotional loss” for the couples forced to postpone what advertising still wishes to define as “one of the happiest days” of their lives.
Other social rituals par excellence that were truncated include the celebration of births and funeral ceremonies. With the former, newborns could not be visited to share the joyous moment. In the case of the latter, the pain of a solitary death in a hospital or care home was compounded by the impossibility of family and friends to come together to express their grief.
Olga Sacharoff, A Wedding, around 1921. Donation from a group of friends and collectors, 1968. Photo: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2023; © The author or her heirs.
Olga Sacharoff, A Wedding
The Russian-Catalan painter (born in Tbilisi) presents us with a wedding scene, although we do not know exactly which moment of the celebration it corresponds to. Is it the wedding party making its way to the ceremony? Or has the couple already married and the retinue is on its way to a celebratory feast, perhaps to be held outdoors, hence the wooded setting that frames the scene? This was the colourful, luminous look and the primitivist, amiable style of Olga’s works during the 1920s and 1930s, in a period after her cubist experimentation but prior to her consolidation as a famous portrait artist.
Anonymous: Group of the Holy Sepulchre, last third of the 15th Polychromed wood, 168x15x48cm, 174x51x45cm, 170x51x35cm, 171x55x36.5cm, 180x57x39cm, 175x55x34cm. MEV, Museu d’Art Medieval, Vic. © MEV, Museu d’Art Medieval.
Anonymous: Group of the Holy Sepulchre
These are six figures from a group dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre that was in the See of Vic. The figures are (in order): Joseph of Arimathea, Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, probably Mary Salome, John and Nicodemus. It is missing a female figure and the Reclining Christ that centred such compositions, which were quite common in 15th and 16th-century sculpture and allowed a visual and expressive display of emotions. Although the artist is unknown, one hypothesis links it to Gabriel Guàrdia who, at the end of the 15th century, would have been responsible for the Holy Sepulchre group in Barcelona cathedral. He is known to have lived in Vic around 1500.
Ramon Tusquets, The Burial of Fortuny, 1874. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Purchased in 1904. © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2023.
Ramon Tusquets, The Burial of Fortuny
Ramon Tusquets had befriended Marià Fortuny in Rome and this painting depicting the funeral procession of the acclaimed artist from Reus became his most emblematic work. Fellow painter, Francisco Pradilla, then retired in Rome, wrote a very detailed description of how the artist’s farewell took place at the Sant Llorenç Extramuros cemetery, where several speeches were made and the last drawing he was working on, a copy of Beethoven’s funeral mask, was placed in his coffin. “In addition to this drawing, a box of colours with which he used to paint small panels was placed in the coffin, (…) and a parchment with the signatures of all the artists present. (…) The Spaniards stayed in the cemetery until the corpse was placed in a provisional grave, on whose plaster wall Suñol wrote: “Mariano Fortuny. November 24, 1874“.
Antoni Samarra i Tugues: Religious Festival in Ponts, 1913. Charcoal and pastel on paper, 33 x 22 cm. MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida collection.
Antoni Samarra i Tugues: Religious Festival in Ponts
The profusion of public reminds us of the eminently social nature of liturgical services and the obligation (for respectable people) to attend mass on Sundays. In Antoni Samarra’s work we observe the contrast between the figures in the foreground –in the shadows and only seen from the rear and in profile– and the bright background where the main altar is drawn, presided over by a baroque altarpiece and where we sense different characters would be several priests officiating the mass. The presence of many priests at the altar could suggest that this is an extraordinary celebration, be it of a festive nature or even the funeral of a high-ranking person, in which the social importance of the deceased was also reflected in the number of chaplains officiating the service. In the same way, this contrast in luminosity also appears to affect the classes: the well-to-do, who would have had a privileged place in the church, with the lower classes attending the service being relegated to the back near the entrance.
Jan Van Roome: The Supplication of Mestra / The Marriage of Mestra, c. 1500. Museu de Lleida.
Jan Van Roome: The Supplication of Mestra / The Marriage of Mestra
The tapestries dedicated to the story of Mestra are part of one of the most important collections of this textile art preserved in Catalonia. They were donated by Bishop Jaume Conchillos to La Seu Vella in 1536. The tapestries had been woven a few years earlier in a workshop in Brussels, one of the main production centres. The story of Mestra recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses explains how this young woman had the gift of transmutation, which allowed her to escape from the houses where she had been bought as a slave. Beyond the mythology, the interest of these tapestries lies in the desire to represent courtly scenes with several characters dressed in the clothing corresponding to the upper social classes of the 15th century.
Joan Grau: Nativity of Jesus and the Adoration of the Shepherds (fragment of the altarpiece of the Rosary from the monastery of Sant Pere Mártir in Manresa), 1642-1646. Polychrome poplar wood. Museu de Manresa.
Joan Grau: Nativity of Jesus and the Adoration of the Shepherds
The theme of the Nativity (Luke 2.15) and the Adoration of the Shepherds –summarised in a single scene– is found in the apocryphal inventiveness that characterises 17th-century European and Catalan works. In the middle and the foreground, the Child Jesus is placed in a basket, focusing the eyes of all the participants. There is only one woman, the Virgin Mary, kneeling and with folded hands, watching Jesus delicately. There is an architectural background, while the upper part is presided over by a flock of angels among clouds. As was common on many altarpieces, which took as models prints of Flemish or Italian origin, this scene is based on the engraving by Cornelis Cort, which was in turn based on a work by Taddeo Zuccaro from 1590.
Antoni Viladomat: Baptism of Saint Francis. Between 1729 and 1733. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, on loan from the Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi, 1902; entered the collection, 1906, public domain.
Antoni Viladomat: Baptism of Saint Francis
This is one of the 20 large-scale paintings representing different episodes in the life of the founder of the Franciscan order painted by Antoni Viladomat for the monastery of Sant Francesc in Barcelona. Viladomat turns the depiction of the baptism into a true baroque scene with the characters dressed in elegant clothing of the period (actually more typical of the late 17th than the 18th century) and inside a temple. An urban landscape can be glimpsed in the background through the open door. In this social event centred around the baptismal font, we also find traditional motifs, such as the dog or the children half climbing into the font so as not to miss any detail of what was going on.
Shall we dance?
The dance can be ritual in the context of a certain tradition. It involves an audience that applauds and endorses it, or it may be merely for fun, without ignoring the fact that a big festa major marquee dance or disco is also ruled by rituality, ranging from exhibition to courtship. The proximity and contact provided by dance was outlawed during the pandemic, when a necessary “social distance” was advocated. Sardanes were allowed if the dancers held a handkerchief or piece of cloth by two ends, so as to avoid hand contact. On the other hand, the festa major dances were suppressed and often reduced to outdoor concerts, which had to be witnessed sitting in well-spaced chairs, while the body was deprived of the expression of movement that follows the rhythm of the music.
Domènec Soler, Lema: For Sabadell, 1911. Gouache and pencil on paper, 112 x 73 cm. Museu d’Art de Sabadell / Sabadell City Council
Domènec Soler, Lema: For Sabadell
Domingo Soler (that was how he signed his name) was a painter from Sabadell who trained in his hometown with Joan Vila Cinca, the patriarch of a well-known lineage of artists. He later studied at La Llotja in Barcelona, where he won a scholarship to study scenography in Paris. He stood out, therefore, as a scenographer, landscape painter and watercolourist. He entered For Sabadell in the competition for the 1911 Festa Major poster and was awarded second prize. It is a luminous scene, dominated by the white clothing of the characters, who are dancing sardanes in what could be the gathering during the festival of the Verge de la Salut (Our Lady of Good Health), the patron saint of Sabadell. In the background we see the bell tower of Sant Félix and the factory chimneys, as an evocation of the industrial city in contrast to the fictitious Arcadia of the gatherings.
Francesc Vayreda i Casabó: The Marquee Loge, 1921. Oil on canvas. Museu de la Garrotxa. On loan. Private collection.
Francesc Vayreda i Casabó: The Marquee Loge
The loge was the box from which to watch the performance, but also in which to be seen. It was a “showcase of young ladies” in the time of Francesc Vayreda, when “dance cards” were filled in according to the requests received. These are what two of the young ladies in this scene are holding in their hands, while another seems engrossed in looking towards the dance floor. Is she looking for someone in particular? These women “wait”, as per the tradition, which does not grant them the prerogative of taking the initiative and asking the man they are interested in to dance. They wait, with veiled and restrained emotion, to be “chosen” in the hope that they are pleased with whoever chooses them. Centuries of waiting and a wait of centuries.
Marià Vayreda i Vila: Ball del Gambeto, a Riudaura, 1890. Museu d’Art de Girona. Girona Provincial Government Collection. Photo: R. Bosch.
Marià Vayreda i Vila: Ball del Gambeto, a Riudaura
This traditional Rosary Dance is known as the Ball del Gambeto (after the long cape worn by the men). It is still danced on Pentecost Sunday, when Riudaura (La Garrotxa county) celebrates the Rosary festival. This type of dance is a variant of the so-called ball pla or ball cerdà performed in several localities in the Ripollès region, including Gombrèn and Sant Joan de les Abadesses, although it also has similarities with that danced in Torà (La Segarra county) for the Rosary Festival. In the same way as men’s clothing is characterised by the long cape or gambeto, the women wear a white hood and shawl. The artist Josep Berga also painted this dance on different occasions.
Ismael Smith: Dancers, 1906. Museu d’Art de Cerdanyola. Photo: Jordi Puig
Ismael Smith: Dancers
One of the pairs of dancers portrayed by the versatile Ismael Smith, who experimented with many artistic languages and here models the arabesque and curvature formed by their bodies to the rhythm of the music. A man and a woman are dancing, but the expression of the movement also denotes a sensual impulse, heightened by the dance as a courtship ritual and an opportunity for contact, perhaps the moment before the lovers melt into a passionate kiss? Be that as it may, practically the only dancing possible during the lockdown was in the dining room with those we shared our home with. How many bodies desired each other at a distance, longing to melt into the rhythm of the music?
Anonymous: Peasant Scene, 18th Oil on canvas, 53.5 x 85 cm. Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.
Anonymous: Peasant Scene
This peasant scene reminds us of the Flemish kermesses so well depicted by David Teniers (with the precedent of Brueghel) and which Antoine Watteau would turn into Fêtes galantes in the same spirit, although converting the peasants into refined characters. This work by an unknown artist depicts a very crowded outdoor party with the characters in a festive mood. Dancing was one of the main activities typical of any moment in the festive event. Here it is obscured by the large number of characters, but nevertheless depicted in different parts of the composition.
Ramon Casas i Carbó: Dance in the Moulin de la Galette, 1890-1891. Oil on canvas, 100.3 x 81.4 cm. Museus de Sitges.
Ramon Casas i Carbó: Dance in the Moulin de la Galette
The Moulin de la Galette, which took its name from the windmill that stood outside, was perhaps one of the most portrayed establishments in Paris between the centuries. Like Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso, Ramon Casas was no exception and this depiction represents the venue not when it was at its busiest, but at a quieter time in the afternoon, with only a few couples dancing and the musicians on stage. This is not the only time Ramon Casas turned his attention to this mythical bohemian venue in Paris. He would recreate the atmosphere again in another work in the same year, entitled “Interior of the Moulin de la Galette”, also tinged with melancholy. It is the same melancholy exuded by Madeleine, who sits alone smoking, watching a man, possibly her lover, dancing with another woman.
Taking the street (I). Leisure and business.
The street was forbidden territory during lockdown. We could view it from our balconies. Its casual occupation –whether by children playing or people walking– was banned and unauthorised use was often denounced by one’s own neighbours. It was not a pleasant situation and fluctuated between imponderables such as fear, obedience and the uncertainty of it all. Some measures that regulated access to the public highway were very controversial, such as the permissiveness regarding walking dogs versus the ban on going out with children. Leaving the house to put the rubbish out became one of the most coveted activities in the daily routine and one of the rare moments in which to recall the taste of freedom.
However, the street is not only a place for leisure, but also a place in which to do business. This was affected by the ban on street markets and fairs that lasted for many months.
Torné-Esquius: Montmartre Fair, c. 1915. Oil on canvas, 49.5 x 59.2 cm. Fundació Palau, Caldes d’Estrac.
Torné-Esquius: Montmartre Fair
This work by Torner i Esquius is evocative of the idyllic, timeless atmosphere of the Sunday fairs, where well-dressed people stroll happily and children are in paradise. Pere Torner i Esquius lived in Paris from 1905, although he never lost his connection with Barcelona. His best-known works mainly evoke the stillness of domestic and inanimate interiors. Here, on the other hand, he presents us with a bright, colourful exterior scene, illustrating the public and collective dimension of spaces devoted to leisure, all together with a gentle, naive primitivism. To the left there is a carousel with horses and to the right some costumed characters appear to be involved in a performance. All this is reminiscent of fairground organ music and the smell of candy floss.
Jaume Morera, Market in Santa Coloma de Queralt, around 1895. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Donated by the artist’s widow, 1928. © Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2023.
Jaume Morera, Market in Santa Coloma de Queralt,
Despite having been born in Lleida, Jaume Morera i Galícia’s family was from Santa Coloma and he maintained a relationship with that town for a good part of his life. He often spent time there and his stays resulted in quite a large number of paintings and related engravings with the local landscape as a pretext. Here he depicts a market scene in Santa Coloma’s porticoed square. Its trapezoidal or slightly triangular shape suggests it is probably viewed from the perspective of a balcony, with the summarily painted columns of the entire uniform portico to the right. Of particular note is the exuberant whiteness of the wagon covers and the movement suggested by the organised disorder of the bundles and goods. It is worth mentioning that Santa Coloma’s has traditionally been one of the great markets of central Catalonia and that it is still held in the square every Monday.
Josep Blanquet i Taberner: Climb to the Castle, 1899. Oil on canvas, 70 x 93.5 cm. Museu de l’Empordà.
Josep Blanquet i Taberner: Climb to the Castle
The Climb to the Castle (referring to that of Sant Ferran de Figueres) reflects the atmosphere of a Sunday fair, which the artist portrayed in other works including The Olot Road or The Pig Market, all of which are in the Empordà Museum. From the framing to the desire for realistic detail, it already shows the influence of photography. It is in fact a direct copy of pictures by the photographer resident in Paris, Josep M. Cañellas, taken in this case from the so-called Rubaudonadeu Album (1888-89). Josep Blanquet opened a drawing academy in Figueres in 1901, which he combined with his activity as a wall painter. Salvador Dalí considered him the first hyperrealist and took some of his works to the tribute exhibition dedicated to him by the Centre d’Art Georges Pompidou in 1979.
Josep Bernat Flaugier or Salvador Mayol: El Pla de la Boqueria, 1810-1820. Oil on canvas, 54 x 130.5 cm. Biblioteca Museu Víctor Balaguer.
Josep Bernat Flaugier or Salvador Mayol: El Pla de la Boqueria
This is a costumista scene in the context of a certain popular castissism from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when in Castile many majas y majos performances were held, recreating the courtship atmospheres of the French Fête galante, derived in turn from the Flemish Kermesse. The scene –according to the title set in Barcelona’s Pla de la Boqueria– introduces picaresque elements, such as the brandished black rooster to scare the girls, the male character with a French-style hat who occupies the central position. There are also musicians, soldiers and children playing. A certain sense of disorder reigns, recalling the scenes of customs and, at the same time, urban chronicles of a satirical nature that artists such as Hogarth had popularised through paintings and engravings. La Rambla as a space is identified by the presence of trees on both sides, in the manner of the French boulevards.
Xavier Gosé i Rovira: Promenoir, c. 1912. Pencil, ink, gouache and fixative on cardboard, 39 x 27.5 cm. MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida collection.
Xavier Gosé i Rovira: Promenoir
The elegant Parisiens depicted by Xavier Gosé, a short-lived illustrator from Lleida who gained international fame and prestige, are walking somewhere and with a specific goal. Perhaps they are just on their way to a party, a casino or a theatre. However, their clothing –top hats for the men, long coats for the women– places them outside, also walking the street in an attitude of strolling that evokes the promenoir of the work’s title. Gosé also contributed to the prestigious fashion magazines of the time and his works are a parade of men’s tailcoats and top hats and modern women’s clothing, which had already abandoned the miscreant and the corset. The sweetness of life that preceded the disaster portrayed by Stefan Zweig in “The World of Yesterday”.
Taking the street (II). The streets will always be ours?
During lockdown we were able to see how health-related fear emptied the streets, not only because it was forbidden to use them idly but because any demonstration or action of mass protest was also unfeasible. Breaking the rules often meant being reprimanded by one’s own neighbours and we began to speak, informally, of the “balcony police”. In this respect, little by little the occupation of the street through the terraces of the hospitality industry was progressively allowed. Even before that, time slots were established for going out for a walk. However, manifestations of a festive and reclamatory nature –retinues, parades, etc.– took the longest to be re-permitted and it was not until 2022 that it was possible to convene them again normally. But what has been the underlying effect of almost two years of paralysation?
Antoni Estruch, Demonstration for the Republic, 1904. Oil on canvas, 141.5 x 201.5 cm. Museu d’Art de Sabadell / Sabadell City Council.
Antoni Estruch, Demonstration for the Republic
Antoni Estruch i Bros was a painter from Sabadell who first trained with the artist Joan Vila i Cinca, founder of the Sabadell Academy of Fine Arts, and then studied at the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona. His travels took him to Rome, Paris, Palestine and Buenos Aires, where he died. His great historicist-themed works make him one of the most outstanding representatives of this pictorial genre in Catalonia, with iconic Catalanist paintings such as Corpus de Sang, also in the Sabadell Art Museum, or September 11, 1714. This demonstration, eminently male and with the characters dressed as workers, is also characterised by the pre-eminence of the two Republican flags in the centre.
Ramon Casas i Carbó: The Charge, 1899-1902. Oil on canvas. Museu de la Garrotxa (on loan from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía de Madrid).
Ramon Casas i Carbó: The Charge
Although it does not represent any specific historical episode, Ramon Casas was inspired by the arrests of anarchists, a consequence of the attack on the Corpus Christi procession in 1896. The protagonist of the scene is the member of the Guardia Civil on horseback knocking over a demonstrator. It is an image endowed with great symbolic power, even more so given the role played by the Guardia Civil on 1 October 2017. The empty space in the centre of the composition, with the crowd in the background, adds dramatic tension to the scene, while showing the symbolic clash between the people who have risen up and the authorities.
Josep Berga i Boix: Subjugating Catalonia, 1877. Museu d’Art de Girona. Girona Provincial Government Collection. Photo: R. Bosch.
Josep Berga i Boix: Subjugating Catalonia
The Garrotxa landscape (between idealisation and reality) is the protagonist of this oil painting by Berga. The imposing nature minimises the presence of this group of men who formed the Somentent, a specifically Catalan militia organised separately from the army for the self-defence of a territory in the event of conflict or various other eventualities. The Somentent was banned several times by the authorities during the centuries of its existence, because it never ceased to be a “subversive” element that evaded official control. It was finally suppressed by the Spanish Senate in 1978.
Joan Abelló: La Diada, last quarter of the 20th Oil on canvas, 89 x 116 cm, 107.5 x 134.5 x 6.5. Museu Abelló.
Joan Abelló: La Diada
Joan Abelló created this work to commemorate Catalan National Day on 11 September 1977, the first to be authorised after Franco’s death, although it had been celebrated in Sant Boi de Llobregat in 1976. It was also known as the “statute demonstration”, given that the slogan was “Liberty, Amnesty and Statute of Autonomy”. It was a massive rally that lasted more than five hours, descending Passeig de Gràcia and Ronda de Sant Pere to the Rafael de Casanova monument. Abelló captures its vital and effervescent pulse, accentuated by the vivid features of the women he depicts.
Anonymous: Santa Úrsula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, late 15th Tempera on wood, 139 x 46, 5 x 8 cm. Museu de Reus
Anonymous: Santa Úrsula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins
This altarpiece from the town of Vilella Alta depicts Saint Ursula in the foreground with the martyr’s palm accompanied by two of the eleven thousand Virgins who have more individualised features. Behind it is only an overlapping of halos that aims to suggest the number of women who consecrated their virginity to the Christian religion, despite the threat of martyrdom. The thematic and temporal distance does not prevent us from seeing a certain analogy between this pictorial concentration of virgin and haloed women and the (predominantly female) demonstrations to commemorate the 8th of March or International Working Women’s Day. The great demonstration of 8 March 2020 was the last large mass concentration of people in the streets of the big cities, less than a week before the curfew was imposed.
Other meeting places
In the harshest moments of lockdown, the only meeting spaces beyond the home were virtual. We connected via Zoom, Meet, Teams, etc., the 21st-century agoras in which we could come together, converse and debate. We also “learned” to work “online” from the solitude of our own homes. In this section we show some meeting places that were forbidden to us: coexistence in a work or teaching environment; the backrooms of shops as gathering spaces; or the laundries of years gone by as places of female confidence and conviviality.
Finally, “visiting” someone during the pandemic also became a utopia and prudence or fear made a big hole in people’s social habits for a long time.
Joan Grau: Jesus among the Doctors of the Law (part of the El Roser altarpiece from the monastery of Sant Pere Màrtir in Manresa), 1642-1646. Polychrome poplar wood. Museu de Manresa.
Joan Grau: Jesus among the Doctors of the Law
This panel was part of the Rosary altarpiece from Sant Pere Màrtir monastery in Manresa. It is one of the most outstanding examples of Catalan baroque altarpieces, of which the Manresa workshop of Joan Grau was one of the finest exponents. Part of the Our Lady of the Rosary cult centred on the prayer of the rosary, this scene represents the last of the so-called “mystery canticles” corresponding to the childhood of Jesus. Mary and Joseph lose sight of Jesus in the bustle of the town and eventually find him arguing with the doctors of the law. He is depicted in a chair and in a high position, imparting or dictating knowledge.
Ramon Torres Prieto: The Shop Backroom of Pitarra, c. 1945. Drawing on paper, 28.8 x 40 cm. Museu Frederic Marès.
Ramon Torres Prieto: The Shop Backroom of Pitarra
This work evokes an actual place in the loft of the clock shop in what was the house of the writer Frederic Soler “Pitarra”, where his famous social gatherings were organised from 1863 to 1871. The ground floor of the house later became the Pitarra Restaurant, which kept the backroom space intact until its closure in 2018, when it became an Irish pub, despite several voices calling for it to be given protected status. On the first anniversary of Pitarra’s death, the illustrated weekly Lo Teatro regional evoked the gatherings, stating that “there was no literary, artistic, political or mere entertainment event that was not discussed in those meetings, that should not be applauded or satirised and that did not deserve, according to him, an auca, an acrostic, a sonnet with peus forsats, a romance or an epigram”.
José Gutiérrez Solana, Gathering at the Apothecary’s House, around 1934. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya. Acquired at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in Barcelona, spring 1942. Photo: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya; © José Gutiérrez Solana, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2023.
José Gutiérrez Solana, Gathering at the Apothecary’s House
Some shops or other establishments, such as barbershops, were (especially in more recent times) places for gatherings and meetings. This work shows us five men sitting in what looks like the exterior of a shop, which we know from the title would have been the apothecary’s house or pharmacy. Two of them are holding the closed umbrellas with which they have left home just in case. Another two are reading newspapers. A small dog is sitting next to the man on the left (who knows if the painter is paying homage to Velázquez here?). Gutiérrez Solana was a magnificent urban chronicler of his time, not only in pictorial but also in literary terms, writing such works as Madrid: escenas y costumbres (two volumes) between 1913 and 1918. Camilo José Cela edited his complete works.
Leandre Cristòfol Peralba: Rinsing (Laundry), 1954. Chestnut wood, 113.2 x 153.8 x 13.3 cm. Donated by Leandre Cristòfol, 1990. MORERA. Museu d’Art Modern i Contemporani de Lleida collection.
Leandre Cristòfol Peralba: Rinsing (Laundry)
The laundry was a public meeting place, primarily for women, where networks of sociability and even community action were traditionally built. It was a place where you went to do hard work, but where you also had the opportunity to talk and share confidences without family or male surveillance. It became a stronghold of solidarity and trust and an escape from domestic seclusion. Ultimately, the gender specific nature of the public space does not deactivate it as a potential arena for struggle and emancipation.
Lluçà Workshop: Altar from Santa Maria in Lluçà (Visitation), 1210-1220. Tempera on wood, 104.5 x 178.5 x 6 cm; 102 x 107.5 x 6.5 cm; 101.5 x 107 x 6.5 cm. MEV, Museu d’Art Medieval, Vic. © MEV, Museu d’Art Medieval.
Lluçà Workshop: Altar from Santa Maria in Lluçà (Visitation)
The Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth (mother of Saint John the Baptist) is an episode from the New Testament recounted in the Gospel of Luke (1:39-56): At that time Mary readied herself and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth, who in a loud voice exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?”. On the Lluçà frontal the two women are the absolute protagonists of the scene, while later the figures of Joseph or Zechariah would be incorporated.