L’U232 Hotel promeut le meilleur art de Barcelone

Les passionnés d’art n’ont plus d’excuses pour ne pas s’évader et profiter d’un week-end complet à Barcelone durant lequel ils pourront visiter quelques-uns des musées et des centres culturels les plus réputés au niveau international. L’U232 Hotel, qui appartient au réseau d’établissements que le groupe Núñez i Navarro possède à Barcelone, a créé l’Art Weekend Pack grâce auquel les visiteurs passeront d’inoubliables journées en compagnie des collections permanentes et temporaires que la ville accueille, tout en profitant des installations et services que cet établissement, plein de personnalité, leur propose.

L’Art Weekend Pack inclut l’entrée à sept des installations culturelles les plus reconnues et admirées de Barcelone. Peinture, sculpture, architecture, photographie… de l’art roman aux tendances les plus innovatrices en passant par le modernisme de Gaudí. À ce pack exclusif, spécialement conçu pour les passionnés d’art, s’ajoute un séjour de deux nuits à l’U232 Hotel, un cocktail de bienvenue au U232 Bar et un petit-déjeuner buffet complet.

L’U232 Hotel est l’endroit idéal pour les voyageurs désireux de profiter de leur escapade à Barcelone, grâce à son emplacement situé tout près des principales zones commerciales et des quartiers d’affaires de la ville tels que le Paseo de Gracia ou l’Avenida Diagonal. Cet hôtel offre une atmosphère sobre et chaleureuse, au style british très prononcé, pleine de réminiscences coloniales.

Hitchcock at the Cinema Verdi

Hong Kong Film Week

Alex Law, Freddie Wong, Ann Hui, Derek Wong and Clement Cheng, Chan Hing-Kai and Janet Chun, Barbara Wong, and Ivy Ho. These are the directors behind the seven films featured in Hong Kong Film Week, which is into its seventh edition this year.

For another year, Casa Àsia is inviting you to enjoy the finest cinema hailing from the Chinese city. This year’s screenings will look at topics like everyday life, interpersonal relationships and affection, and local conflicts in a global world. Titles such as All About Love by Ann Hui insist on these and other aspects just like The Drunkard or La Comédie Humaine, where the sense of humour and satire are mixed with the anthropological and social analysis. This annual date allows us to show the audience some of the most relevant productions of cinematographic industry as productive as the one in Hong Kong.

The screenings will be held at Cinemes Méliès. Please visit Casa Àsia website to find detailed information on screenings and dates.

The largest retrospective of Delacroix, now in Barcelona

Every facet of Eugène Delacroix can be seen at the exhibition on at the CaixaForum. This is the most important retrospective dedicated to the French painter for half a century, and features over a hundred and thirty works. These will include paintings from the world’s most important museums; works that are milestones in Western visual culture. You will be able to see not just Delacroix’s most famous oil paintings but also a series of works that explore the painter’s relationship with Spain. CaixaForum offers you an Interactive visit.

This exhibition, jointly organized by CaixaForum and the Louvre as part of an agreement of collaboration is the most important in Spain that has been organized around the figure of Delacroix. It has loans of such important institutions as the National Gallery in London, the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the Art Institute of Chicago.

CaixaForum has been designed as a space for dissemination and debate on culture and its many manifestations. It offers a miscellaneous range of subjects that covers all periods, from the initial manifestations of art to the most innovative and recent avant-garde, and feature the greatest ever exponents of art and culture. CaixaForum also periodically runs cycles of conferences, seminars, courses, concerts, performances and special events that help to prompt reflection on this changing world and better understanding both of our society and that of other cultures.

CaixaForum is located in Montjuïc, just a few meters from our B-Hotel in Plaza Espanya and next to Las Arenas shopping mall.

Joan Miró: The ladder of escape

Renowned as one of the greatest Surrealist painters, filling his paintings with luxuriant colour, Joan Miró worked in a rich variety of styles. This is a rare opportunity to enjoy more than 150 paintings, drawings, sculptures and prints from moments across the six decades of his extraordinary career. This exhibition is co-organised by Tate Modern and Fundació Joan Miró.

The exhibition also traces an anxious and politically engaged side to Miró’s work that reflects his passionate response to one of the most turbulent periods in European history. Working in Barcelona and Paris, Miró tracked the mood of the Spanish Civil War and the first months of the Second World War in France. It also shows that, behind the engaging innocence of his imagery, lies a profound concern for humanity and a sense of personal and Catalan national identity. Extraordinary works from different moments of his career celebrate his roots in his native Catalonia.

Fundació Joan Miró is located at Montjuic, accesible by Funicular from Parallel station, just in front of Hotel Barcelona Universal. You can reach Fundació Joan Miró also from Plaza Espanya, by bus line 50, stopping next to B-Hotel.

More information can be found at Fundació Joan Miró website.

Sitges 2011: International Fantasy Film Festival

A grand total of 270 films make up the festival, which this year is aiming to boost its section structure, which has helped to enable every type of audience to find their own space. Spaces that are opening to family audiences this year with the Sitges Family seal.

One of its most popular side-activities, The Jack Daniel’s SITGES Zombie Walk 2011 will be held on October 14th, beginning at 20:30h at the Miramar Building. Following the Zombie Walk there will be a free night party on the beach.

SITGES International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia is the number one fantasy film festival in the world and represents, at the same time, the cultural expression with the most media impact in Catalonia. With a solid experience, the Sitges Festival is a stimulating universe of encounters, exhibitions, presentations and screenings of fantasy films from all over the world.

Born in 1968 as the 1st International Week of Fantasy and Horror Movies, today the Festival is an essential rendezvous for movie lovers and audiences eager to come into contact with new tendencies and technologies applied to film and the audiovisual world.

Hyperphotos: A fantastical Barcelona

Sagrada Família, Palau de la Música, Pedrera and the Cathedral are the most photographed monuments in the city, but through the lens of the French artist Jean-François Rauzier they are transformed into magical and mysterious places.

Rauzier uses a technique based on creating a collage from various instant snapshots to create these hyperphotos, thirty of which are included in the exhibition Voyages Extraordinaires Barcelona, at the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona. There you will discover a fantastical and surprising city.

Rauzier is the creator of  hyperphoto, whereby you can cope with the impossible: combine the infinitely large with the infinitely small in an image outside of time. Using a technique that involves creating an image using a collage of more than 800 photos.

Barcelona Fashion Showcase

The city’s main fashion events coincide once again. The Brandery fashion show, which takes place from 13 to 15 July, features an area open to the general public among its new features. The 080 Barcelona Fashion catwalk, from 12 to 15 July, is being held at historical site of the Barcelona University, while the ModaFad parade and market will be on from 14 to 15 July.

While The Brandery, an urban fashion fair designed to show off the latest trends from the big brands, is organising a competition for new talent, the 080 Barcelona Fashion catwalk, an indie fashion platform, is letting in big names.

The Brandery is the new hotspot of urban fashion, a hub of trends, design, music, creativity and business. Exhibitions, catwalk shows, live music… all under the same roof which, for the first time this year, will have a new sector open to the general public: The Brandtown Fashion Xperience, which will coexist with the traditional The Brandery trade show.Such apparent contradictions share the same spirit, that of putting Barcelona on the fashion map, publicising successful businesses and introducing up-and-coming designers.

Creativity and innovation are the concepts that inspire 080 Barcelona Fashion, an initiative driven by the Catalan Government, as an open, plural multidisciplinary, international fashion platform.

This July at least sees these two events coinciding with the ModaFad events and activities once again to provide a highly unique fashion week. And B-Hotel features Fitting Room, an event where design, fashion and arts come together.

The ModaFAD activity consists of the international showing of emerging fashion designers to boost the interdisciplinary, drive the concept of the designer and promoted, and encourage the relationship between the design schools, the young designers, the specialized modes of communication, and the industry.

Detailed information can be found on each event website:

• The Brandery
• 080 Barcelona Fashion
• ModaFAD
• Fitting Room at B-Hotel

SonarKids: Creative Music & Experiences for children

After the success of the last two events, the 3rd SonarKids on Sunday 19 June isthe ideal finishing touch to Sónar 2011 to enjoy with all the family. SonarKids has a great deal of activities and creative experiences designed for parents and children to have fun and learn about different artistic disciplines by playing in a new and original way.

SonarKids presents a musical line-up fulll of top drawer shows, with performances by the Portuguese group Buraka Som Sistema, the renowned British dj and BBC Radio 1 presenter Gilles Peterson, the kiddie pop group Papa Topo, the indie pop group Polock, the stories sung by Barbara i Els Morenos, DJ Amarelo and the wizardry on the decks of the Pioneer Dj Kids.

The fun characters of Pintatelotu are the stars of the new SonarKids image. Pintatelotu offers children the opportunity to have fun and learn while they are playing and colouring in their gallery of characters. Are they monsters? aliens? animals?

More inf@: SonarKids website

Frederic Marès Museum reopens

The Museu Frederic Marès is a unique collecting museum that preserves the collections assembled by its founder, sculptor Frederic Marès (1893-1991) in a part of the old Royal Palace of the Counts of Barcelona in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. Its original Verger or courtyard garden, still remains intact.

Throughout his lifetime he amassed an extensive Hispanic sculpture collection, as well as tens of thousands of objects that make up a vast collection of collections that documents past lifestyles and customs, mainly from the 19th century. There you can find amusing, unique items like fans, pipes, clocks, jewellery, photographs, toys, keys, pharmacy bottles and reliquaries, all presented in an intimate atmosphere.

The Verger of the Royal Palace is a courtyard filled with orange trees surrounded by arched galleries, a pleasant spot in fine weather; and its open from April to September, both for museum visitors and promenaders.

Frederic Marès i Deulovol (Portbou, 1893 – Barcelona, 1991) came to Barcelona with his family in 1903, when he was ten years old. He immediately started attending classes at the School of Fine Arts, La Llotja, where he received training as a sculptor, and where he would later work as a teacher until 1964.

However, in addition to being a sculptor, Marès also felt a passion for collecting from a tender age. He discovered the world of antiquarians and auctions in Paris back in 1911 and purchased his first collections. He gradually expanded them and gathered them in his sculpture workshop and at his home until in 1944 the Association of Friends of Catalan Museums held an exhibition with a selection from his collection at the City History Archive, and he publicly expressed his determination to donate his collection to the city.

More inf@: Museu Frederic Marès.

Next Page »