Volum! Exhibition at Macba Museum Barcelona

“Volum!” turns visitors to the Macba into listeners on a physical journey that aims to move from the central role of more classic three dimensionality to that of the volume of sound and voice as key artistic production materials, for exploring the transition from the 20th to the 21st century.

And it does so through 350 works of art by 75 international artists, including Miquel Barceló, Samuel Beckett, Luis Gordillo, Richard Hamilton, Joan Miró, Xavier Miserachs, Muntada, Juan Muñoz, Bruce Nauman, Antoni Tàpies, Jean Dubuffet, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Allan McCollum, Anselm Kiefer, Latifa Echakhch and James Coleman.

This is the first in a series of large-scale exhibitions jointly organised by the Macba and the “la Caixa” Foundation with various selections of the 5.500 works that make up the collections of the two institutions.

The exhibition questions the continued validity of the white cube as an architectural model in which the eye is the only means of accessing art.

Paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and installations all form part of this exhibition which explores artistic practices from the mid twentieth century to the present day, highlighting the change in the sensory paradigm.

Highlights of the exhibition include: the video Not I, a dramatic monologue that Samuel Beckett brought to television; the video installation by Bruce Nauman Shit in your hat; the room with geometric tiles Waste Land, by Juan Muñoz; the painting Saison des pluies nº2, by Miquel Barceló; the installation Hey Joe, by Kristin Oppenheim, and Cristina Iglesias‘ Corredor Suspendido II.

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.

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.

A Whale Skeleton installed at Museu Blau

From last Tuesday 12 July, visitors to the Museu Blau will be received by a very special host: the whale skeleton from the Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona’s collection.

This skeleton of a Common Finback whale has now been installed in the museum’s entrance hall, and is displayed in a more natural position than at the Castell dels Tres Dragons. The size of the hall allows it to be exhibited in the position it adopts when diving into the sea.

The museum was closed to the public from 1 to 11 July so that the 20-metre long skeleton, which weighs one tonne. A team of architects were required for this to be possible, along with a series of companies specialising in large-scale assembly and cetacean skeleton assembly experts.

The skeleton has been under restoration over the past few months and the front part of the cranium has been repaired, after it was damaged when being taken down a year ago. All the bones have been weighed and measured, replicas of the invertebral discs, previously missing, were made, and the anchorage and support points designed.

As head of collections at the Natural Science Museum, Eulàlia Garcia, explained, the whale has a steel tube running through the spinal column, to which the anchorage points are attached, thus ensuring that the bones themselves would not be damaged for the installation. Some 44 cables hold the skeleton in place.

Museu de Ciències Naturals de Barcelona – Museu Blau
Pl Leonardo Da Vinci, 4 | Sant Martí

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.

Picasso Lithographer

New Exhibitions at Museums of Barcelona

The Picasso Museum is holding an exhibition on artists’ responses to the Franco dictatorship in Spain. It takes as its departure point a series of engravings made by the artist in 1937 entitled The Dream and Lie of Franco.

Montjuic offers explorations into the past: MNAC is giving an exhibition on the 19th-century French Realist painter, Gustave Courbet while the CaixaForum is presenting an archaeological exhibition on the ancient Mexican site of Teotihuacan, whose fame rests on its enormous step pyramids.

If you fancy a bit of thought-provoking photojournalism, then you mustn’t miss the exhibition on at the CCCB featuring photographs taken by Gervasio Sanchez and showing the parallels between forced disappearances under oppressive regimes in South America, the Middle East and Spain.

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.

Terres Blaves – Blue Lands exhibition at Barcelona Ceramic Museum

The Barcelona Ceramic Museum is holding an exhibition entitled ‘Terres blaves‘ – Blue Lands about blue, a primary colour with over 110 shades that, since 2600 BC, has been closely associated with the history of ceramics in the Middle East (Mesopotamia and Egypt).

It was introduced to China during the 8th century through the Silk Route and it reached Al-Andalus by sea in the 13th century. Eventually it spread throughout Europe from the Iberian peninsula. The exhibition introduces the works of contemporary artists who have been fascinated by this colour’s rich range of shades and effects and who have exploited all its possibilities to adapt them to their own artistic languages.

Terres blaves is an exhibition in appreciation and recognition of Trinidad Sánchez-Pacheco (1931-2001) for her lifelong dedication to pottery, on the tenth anniversary of her death. The exhibition consists of works Piccasso, Braque, Miro and Gardy-Artigas, ceramists and professionally linked with Sanchez-Pacheco like Maria Bofill, Antoni Cumella, Madola, Rosa Amoros and others.

Museu de Ceràmica -> Av Diagonal, 686 | Les Corts
Thursdays to Fridaysfrom 10h to 18h | Sundays & Holidays from 10h to 15h

Museu Picasso’s Knowledge and Research Centre

With the smell of fresh paint in the air and the future library’s shelves still empty, the Museu Picasso has presented its Knowledge and Research Centre, a new building located just next to the medieval mansions that have, until now, housed the museum’s activities.

The building, which received funding to the tune of €6.7 million, will open soon but gradually, with school activities the first to move there and then the library and archives, which will be on the second floor.

The first floor of the centre, designed by the architect Jordi Garcés, will have a series of four multipurpose spaces intended for workshops, talks, seminars and master’s-degree courses. The basement will have facilities and storage spaces for non-artistic objects, among other things.

Thanks to the new building the Museu Picasso will now have 13.000 square metres at its disposal. The plan is to re-organise the spaces freed up with the launch of the new centre.

In addition, the museum will gain a new entrance on Plaça de Jaume Sabartés, though the ticket offices will not be moved from their current location for the time being. This will help to reduce crowding on Carrer de Montcada.

Location -> c/ Montcada 15-23

Next Page »