Exhibitions
Josep Amat humanizes nature: domesticated landscapes and naturalized cities in Montserrat
The museum is hosting an exhibition of the painter who captured the tandem between man and nature until January.
The Montserrat Museum is opening a new exhibition: The Humanization of Nature , by Josep Amat. Curated by Assumpció Cardona, the exhibition can be visited until January 18th in the Puig i Cadafalch Hall.
The exhibition explores the harmonious coexistence between humans and nature, a common thread in Amat's work, known for his impressionist-inspired landscapes with brushstrokes close to Fauvism. This selection of works offers a poetic and intense look at the dialogue between man and his natural environment, highlighting the painter's sensitivity and chromatic strength.
This exhibition tour recovers around thirty works by Josep Amat i Pagès, focused on the representation of landscapes that bring the viewer closer to a nature that is not wild, but shaped and transformed by human action. The artist shows worked and adapted landscapes: mountains with open paths, cultivated fields and environments modified to make them accessible and functional.
In short, his work portrays a domesticated nature, where the human presence is evident and his intervention transforms the territory into a reflection of man's needs, efforts and sensitivity. This view combines impressionist aesthetics with a clear intention: to show how the relationship between humans and the landscape can be harmonious, balancing natural beauty with the utility and organization of spaces.
The exhibition establishes a dialogue between two closely linked areas, which present thematic and compositional parallels. In the first, Amat portrays a nature that we could describe as dominated and domesticated, transformed by human action: open paths, cultivated fields and environments adapted for use and accessibility. In the second area, this conception of nature is transferred to the city, where urban spaces are presented as naturalized landscapes: paths flanked by shady plane trees find their equivalent in the ramblas, urban promenades or municipal parks and gardens.
The title of the exhibition is inspired by the commemoration of the millennium of the Montserrat Monastery, a fundamental historical and cultural reference in the humanization of the mountain. This reference not only highlights the relationship between man and nature, but also underlines the way in which human presence has shaped the landscape over the centuries, establishing a balance between natural beauty and conscious intervention in the environment.
Through this approach, the exhibition invites the visitor to reflect on the transformation of the territory and on how the artist's gaze allows us to perceive the city and the landscape as extensions of the same dialogue between man and nature.
