Drawing as thought in action and visual memory in the legacy of Manuel Puig

Sitges museums - and, with them, all Sitges citizens - have reason to celebrate the recovery of the Sala Vaixells of the Palau Maricel intended for temporary exhibitions. Despite its modest dimensions, this new rectangular space represents a conceptual, logistical and pedagogical challenge for any curator who wants to conceive an artistic exhibition project there. However, it has already housed the following two temporary exhibitions: The Framed Figure. Unique Works from the Casacuberta Marsans Collection (from July 5 to September 29, 2024) and The Friend of the Arts. Art and Poetry in Sitges, 1926-1929 (from November 22, 2024 to March 16, 2025). Currently, we can see the third exhibition called The Praise of Drawing. The Manuel Puig collection (May 16, 2025 to October 19, 2025), under the expertise of curators Bonaventura Bassegoda and Francesc Quílez.

• Interior of the room. Part of stories, stories and narratives.

This collective exhibition of seventy-two drawings makes up the precious heritage legacy of Dr. Manuel Puig i Costa (1951), a prominent Catalan surgeon and academic of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (2017). A diachronic drawing collection that, for the first time, is presented in exhibition format thanks to the dissemination policy of the Sitges Heritage Consortium. From this background, its curators -intellectual authors- have known how to resignify and value the relevance of drawing as an artistic discipline, pedagogical method, creative process, kinesthetic thinking system and aesthetic experience.

Once inside the Sala Vaixells, the viewer is immersed in a conglomerate of drawings from different periods (from the 16th to the 20th century), styles and techniques (pencil, charcoal, pastel...), installed on the wall in a very organic way that, many times, reminds you of a galactic constellation sui generis . Likewise, throughout the two well-used subspaces, a handful of drawings by well-known Western artists (Carles Casagemas, Erich Heckel, David Hockney, Fernand Léger, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, Joan Miró, Pablo Ruiz Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Andy Warhol...) exchange glances, gestures, artistic genres (academies, portraits, still lifes and landscapes), biblical stories, historical accounts, mythologies, dreams and stylistic sensibilities with each other and with the viewer.

• Mela Muter. (1910). Female nude © Photographic archive of the Sitges Heritage Consortium

Despite the long list of works by male artists, the exhibition features the unusual presence of five drawings by five female artists of the stature of Mela Muter with the study Nu femení (1910), Natalia Gontxarova with a gouache drawing with a collage of fabrics entitled Lerrena (1916), Suzanne Valadon with her rather introspective Self-portrait ( 1894), Remedios Varo with a surrealist work entitled L'escura-xemeneies (1940) and Paula Rego with her Retrat femení (1991). Female artists who, from the visual arts, have reaffirmed and claimed their authorship and professional status, through the centralization of women as a leitmotif in their female portraits and self-portraits and, when developing proscribed themes such as the representation of the nude, then reserved for male artists.

• Suzanne Valadon. (1084). Self-portrait. © Photographic archive of the Sitges Heritage Consortium

Following the previous paragraph, we should ask ourselves about the reasons for this meager list of women artists in Manuel Puig's collection. Without wanting to speculate on possible answers that could raise dust, it is worth saying that until the sixties of the last century, the creative capacity and professional credibility of women artists have been questioned, marginalized and silenced by the institution of Art. In this context, we must add the curator and art critic Elina Norandi who, in her book Cent dues artistes (2020), rescues and gives visibility to a whole history of Catalan women artists - between the 19th and 20th centuries - silenced and relegated to the sphere of the home and care.

Before closing this article, it should be emphasized that the diversity of techniques and themes of the drawings exhibited here emphasize drawing as a reflective and procedural method linked to the connection between the eye and the hand, which in the words of the teacher at the Escola Superior d'Arts Plàstiques and the Escola Técnica Superior d'Architecture de Barcelona; Amèlia Romo, helps to improve attention, strengthen the capacity for observation and perception and, at the same time, experiment flexibly, without being afraid of making mistakes. In other words, in any creative process of a work of art, craft, or design, analog or digital drawing enhances a thought in action that, at the very least, is inserted behind desires, aesthetics, ideas, concerns, feelings, etc.

• Juan Gris. (1925). Guitar and compotier © Photographic archive of the Sitges Heritage Consortium

And, to conclude, in the exhibition as a whole, mention should be made of the success of connecting the interests, desires and personal aesthetic tastes of the collector which, in the end, contributes to determining a particular history of art and a clear commitment to art. In this regard, Dr. Puig emphasized in his speech of admission as an academic (January 24, 2017) that “... collecting defines the taste and values of an era. What is collected says a lot about the social transformation of a given era”. A statement that confirms, in my opinion, the biased construction of the theory of art, theory of taste and Western aesthetic experience towards certain criteria and values coming from experts in the sector. A consensus that, paraphrasing Hume, oscillates between a more empirical aesthetic experience and the preservative need to be normalized and codified.