St George in Barcelona: The World Book & Rose Day

Sant Jordi (St George) on the 23rd of April is the most romantic day of the Catalan calendar. In Barcelona, the main streets and squares are full of rose sellers and bookstalls, and traditionally the men give the women a rose and the women present the men with a book.

As legend goes, the patron saint of Catalonia killed a dragon to save a princess. He presented her with the red roses that grew from its blood. The day is also dedicated to books in honour of William Shakespeare and Miguel Cervantes who died on April 23rd 1616.

It is a day of Catalan pride. Sant Jordi cakes are iced in the colours of the Catalan flag and roses are bound with yellow and red striped ribbon.

Discover the Legend of Sant Jordi

Gustave Courbet and Realism at MNAC Barcelona

The French Painter Gustave Courbet rocked the art world in the 19th century. Through his brush, reality entered painting: Realism was born.

With the aim of tracing his footsteps in our country, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) is exhibiting, until July 10th, a selection of his most outstanding works, most of which are being shown in Spain for the first time. The exhibition reveals Courbet’s influence on Catalan painting in the period, most of all through the work of Ramon Martí Alsina, the man responsible for the renewal of painting and who introduced Realism to the Spanish art scene.

It is an ambitious exhibition, produced by the MNAC, that invites the public to gain greater in-depth knowledge of Realism and at the same time discover its precedents and its legacy, in a show that deliberately goes beyond the temporal limits of this movement:  from the Spanish Golden Age, with paintings by Murillo, Ribera and Velázquez, to contemporary art, through the work of Antoni Tàpies, one of the most universal Catalan artists.

U232 Hotel offers you an Art Weekend in Barcelona, a special package including accommodation at our 4 star hotel, with a welcome drink and breakfast, and the Barcelona Art Ticket which entitles to visit the 7 largest museums of Barcelona: MNAC, MACBA, Museu Picasso, Fundació Joan Miró, La Pedrera, Fundació Antoni Tàpies and CCCB.

Mecal: International Short Film Festival of Barcelona

This year Mecal, the short film festival that originated 13 years ago, has as many as eight venues and it is as determined as ever to show the versatility and creativity to be found in short films.

The boom in shorts, partly explained by the quality of some of the more affordable digital devices around, is also reflected in the quantity of works received by the festival, nearly 3,500 this year. The final selection is split into three competition sections, with films from over 30 countries, and an even more eclectic fringe programme that combines cult shorts with angrier contemporary ones, as at previous festivals.

Discovering the audiovisual panorama of the Czech Republic, this year’s guest country, is one of the attractions this time round. The shorts that are going to be screened range from the best of the recent batch to film school productions.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xhipln

Mecal 2011
XIII International Short Fim Festival of Barcelona
April, 8th – 17th
http://eng.mecalbcn.org/

Classical movies with live jazz music

When cinema was invented, over a century ago, it was usual for screenings of those early silent films to have commentators and musicians to liven up the moving pictures.

The Círcol Maldà has taken up this idea again with a programme of silent films accompanied by jazz. Every Sunday you can see the silent classics of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Snub Pollard, accompanied by music from the maestro, Josep Maria Borras, on piano.

The movies selected on these projections are Charles Chaplin’s One AM, Buster Keaton’s The Goat and Snub Pollard’s It’s a Gift.

When: Every Sunday at 8.30pm
Where: Círcol Maldà
Pi, 5 <M> Liceu

Xavier Mariscal at La Pedrera

Xavier Mariscal, Valencian-born artist working since 1970 in Barcelona, presents a new exhibition at La Pedrera, the famous building by Antoni Gaudí.

With drawing as an essential instrument, Xavier Mariscal has developed his own artistic language which has gone beyond graphic design. The creator of Barcelona’92 Cobi has become an all-round multidisciplinary artist. Mariscal’s language is synthetic, with few strokes and a great deal of expressiveness. His works have been already on exhibitions at Memphis, Milano or Paris. He is also the “father” Twipsy, Hannover 2000. Thanks to his designs and ideas, he has partnered with architects such as Arata Isozaki or Alfredo Arribas.

It is a nice coincidence for Núñez i Navarro Hotels, as Alfredo Arribas designed our B-Hotel and Hotel Soho Barcelona.

Discover him at the exhibition “Mariscal a la Pedrera”, which looks back over this designer’s forty-year career. Also, discover the working methods used by this tireless creator who has created a five metre high work entitled Alegria for this exhibition.

Where: La Pedrera
Passeig de Gràcia, 92. <M> Diagonal
When: Until January 30th 2011.
Cost: Free

17.000 people at Palau de la Música

Throughout August, Palau de la Música Catalana pulled in over 17,000 people for the two summer  music cycles. This summer was the first time Palau de la Música was open with a musical programme, and it seems the folk of Barcelona liked the idea.

Palau de la Música Catalana (Catalan Music Palace) is one of the select monuments deemed an official UNESCO World Heritage Site and still widely accessible to the citizens of the world. Today, the masterpiece by modernist architect Lluís Domènech i Montaner stands out among the world’s most prestigious concert halls. Both our Hotel Jazz and Hotel 1898 are on short walking distance, offering you luxury accommodation and suites in Barcelone.

Free activities in Barcelona during summer!

Whatever you’re into, you can enjoy summer to the full in Barcelona! Even if you’re on a budget, there are many free activities this August.

Outdoor cinema buffs can head to the CCCB in the Raval for the annual “Gandules” cycle, which this year complements the contemporary culture centre’s intriguing exhibition on labyrinths.

Films such as Jean-Luc Godard’s Alphaville or David Lynch’s Lost Highway are screened from Tuesday to Thursday at 10pm. Get there early to grab a sandwich and a seat.

For the ideal combination of art and air conditioning, check out one of the many free exhibition centres in town. They include the Caja Madrid Espai Cultural in Plaça Catalunya, Gaudi’s Pedrera, and Palau Robert on Passeig de Gràcia, which takes you on a tour of the Mediterranean. Caixa Forum on Montjuic explores the work of internationally renowned Majorcan artist Miquel Barceló.

What’s more, other museums and galleries waive their entry charge on Sunday afternoons, including the Picasso and the nearby Design museums in the Born, or the CCCB and the Virreina photography space in the centre.

For those that prefer to be outdoors, the many lovely parks in the city offer a shady haven from the heat, and a very special experience at night, set the scene for free concerts in classical music, jazz and sarsuela.

And if you’re in party spirits don’t miss the lively and colourful street celebrations in Gràcia, in the third week of August, and Sants in the last week, with their extravagant street decorations and live bands in the evenings.

Barcelona 2159: the city in the future

Over 300.000 Barcelona residents and some of the city’s top creators have tried to imagine what the city will be like in 2159, leaving their testimony in a time capsule for storage somewhere in the city in a few months’ time.

We spoke to Öwn, Kolectivo Huevo Frito and Mosi Mosi, three creators who work in the city and wanted to take part in the Barcelona 2159 initiative, creating the Barcelona of the future in small video clips.

Kolectivo Huevo Frito think men will destroy the environment but they will never be able to destroy the world because it will continue with other civilisations. The survival of nature is precisely what they feature in a video made with animated paper figures where the Eixample disappears and gives way to a green city.

Mosi Mosi, meanwhile, have taken the most frequently recurring jokes among city residents to imagine the future Barcelona: a Sagrada Família that is still not finished, there will be Winter Olympic Games and we will always, always have the sea.

Barcelona 2159 has already devised the 2 metre high stainless steel capsule with a glass container to store these videos, messages sent to the website and the email address, and the videos recorded on the video machine going round the city.

Courbet exhibition at Museu Diocesa

Paintings, drawings, engravings, photographs, documents and personal objects. In all, there are 100 items in “Courbet, between Nature and Culture”, the first major exhibition in Spain dedicated to the father of realism: Gustave Courbet.

Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819 – 1877) was a French painter  who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social commentary in his work.

You can visit this exhibition at Museu Diocesa. It offers an all-round view of Courbet’s character, both as an artist and a democratic activist. It also highlights his relationship with Catalonia and Spain, and the influence his ideas had on other artists, like Picasso and Miró.

The exhibition features masterpieces such as “Le Chateau de Chillon” or “Portrait d’homme d’apres Velazquez” and many landscapes of Normandy.

Where: Museu Diocesa
Av. Catedral, 4 (next to the Cathedral)
When: Until September 5th, 2010.

Loop Barcelona. Videoart Festival

For eleven days, Barcelona will be the great international showcase of video art. Loop Barcelona – now in its 8th year – hosts its most extensive programme ever, featuring over one thousand videos in some hundred venues located throughout the city. 

In a restaurant, in a bookshop and even in a flat specially rented for the occasion, video art comes to the whole city for eleven days of Loop Barcelona, the most important international event in visual creation in existence.

Artists presenting works include Michael Snow, Perejaume, John Baldessari, Miquel Barceló, Isabel Coixet, Eulàlia Valldosera and Bill Viola.

Among the videoforums that have been prepared, you might find yourself inspired by a meeting with film director Hannah Collins, who has a joint project with Ferran Adrià, or by seeing what television arts presenter Jef Cornelis has to say.

You can also see Miquel Barceló’s live creation of a piece of art at the Museu de Ceràmica de Barcelona.

More inf@: Loop Barcelona

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