Dies de Dansa Festival in Barcelona

Núñez i Navarro Hotels, with 9 hotels in the center of Barcelona, sponsor the Dies de Dansa Festival Barcelona from 1 to July 5, 2010.

Dies de Dansa is an international contemporary dance festival in urban spaces. It is a free annual cultural project born in Barcelona, which is part of the GREC Festival de Barcelona. During five days buildings, streets, parks and plazas flood with life in this encounter between dance, urban space and community.

Dies de Dansa takes place in different points of Barcelona, such as the Center for Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB), the Joan Miró Foundation, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), the Picasso Museum; as well as in the cities of Mataró, Sabadell and Sitges. The daylight programme consists on the presentation of short performances that artists elaborate specifically for each place, with the participation of over 25 national and international companies.

Dies de Dansa also programmes Workshops for the community, a series of free dance workshops suitable to professionals and amateurs, and the workshops Dance within the Family, which throughout experimentation, creativity and research, stimulates the emotional bonds in a fun way.

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints

The exhibition “Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints” which is open until 14 February 2010, the fruit of some unique research by the Museu Picasso, puts nineteen Japanese prints that belonged to the artist on display for the first time. The exhibition, with over a hundred works, establishes a dialogue between these prints and Picasso’s own erotic engravings.

Although at some point in his life Picasso maintained he had no interest in Japanese art, it is known the painter often changed his ideas.

The exhibition introduces us to the phenomenon of Japonism, which arrived in Barcelona at the end of the 19th century. Picasso’s masters, like Rusiñol, Cases and Nonell discovered Japanese art first hand and were seduced by its flat images.

In Paris too, many of Picasso’s contemporaries were influenced by these images and Japanese aesthetics. In fact, the artist did a sketch for a poster advertising a play with the actress Sadayakko, which revolutionised the artistic atmosphere of the time.

It is known that Picasso owned a Japanese print in 1911 and never got rid of his collection, which contains sixty examples from when Japanese printing was at its height, at around 1700-1800, and its key exponents.

As with these prints, Picasso did not hesitate in showing naked bodies in all their splendour, sketching the genitals of the lovers and showing explicit sex scenes. He even contorted the bodies if necessary.

Secret Images. Picasso and Japanese Erotic Prints | From 05/11/2009 to 14/02/2010
Museu Picasso -> C Montcada, 15 - Ciutat Vella

Seduced by Kees Van Dongen.

The “Kees Van Dongen” exhibition, which has also been shown in Montreal and Monaco and is now on at Barcelona’s Museu Picasso until 27 September, takes the artist, regarded as one of the best representatives of fauvism, out of this oblivion.

In fact, the artist’s more interesting works were painted long before. It was in Paris that the leitmotif which would continue throughout the subsequent phases in his artistic development first appeared: women.

First, he drew them, with strokes reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec’s style, and began to show a special interest in prostitutes, cabaret performers, dancers and circus artists. The world of popular arts was the only thing that interested Van Dongen, who shunned the great traditional themes of painting.

Eroticism and female seduction, the central themes of his paintings, combined with the painting’s material, colours and strokes, especially during Van Dongen’s fauvist phase. It led him, in the end, into the fold of the German expressionist group, Die Brücke.

Even the exotic element he found in his trips to Spain and Egypt is expressed in his women’s portraits: belly dancers, mulatto women and Seville dancers all feature in Van Dongen’s prolific creations.

Later on, the artist stylised his models, to satisfy his clients with more slender figures. Nevertheless, you only need look at the Tango of the Archangel to see the provocative element remained.

Exposició Kees Van Dongen | From 11/06/2009 to 27/09/2009
Museu Picasso: C Montcada, 15 - Ciutat Vella

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