Exhibitions
Demystifying peasant life
The exhibition 'Counterpastoral. Art and Farming' explores the complexities of rural life, at the Morera – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Lleida until May 31.
The premise of Contrapastoral. Art and Farming is very clear: to show peasant life beyond the picturesque clichés and the condescension with which, too often, the rural world is imagined from the city. That is, to propose a vision far removed from the stereotypes of the pastoral genre, from the idealization of the countryside that feeds literature and painting, and to make explicit the complexities and tensions that are experienced there. To present the countryside in its diversity and with all the contradictions that it entails. To do this, Pau Minguet, curator of the exhibition, explores different issues that explain the country's peasant reality, and proposes a journey through the Catalan peasantry in the last century and a half. “It is an approach,” he points out, “to a theme and some problems that can be global (depopulation, the exploitation of resources, the protests arising from the Mercosur treaty), but in this case focused on the closest context and based on works by Catalan artists.”
The exhibition, inaugurated on March 12, takes shape from a fruitful dialogue between historical and contemporary pieces, which come from the collections of the Morera Museum and from the collection of the network of Catalan museums and centers, such as the MNAC, the Tàpies Foundation, the MACBA or the National Archives. Contrapastoral is structured around six areas that offer, through a critical look and an almost anthropological will, a careful analysis of the evolution of the countryside. As a taster: how agriculture has transformed (and transforms) the landscape at each moment based on, among others, a landscape by Hernàndez Pijuan, a canvas by Olga Sacharoff or a performative action by Albert Gusi. A sculpture by Leandre Cristòfol or the intervention by Isabel Banal serve to focus on the faces of the countryside. A peasant woman by Ismael Smith and the action Woman-tree by Fina Miralles illustrate working the land with hands, the act of sowing. Machinery has become an inseparable part of the agricultural landscape and conditions its production and speculation. This is where the creations of Marc Sellarès and Lluís Trepat are located, who use these utensils for their representations.
Minguet, director of Lo Pardal. Guillem Viladot d'Agramunt Foundation, has sometimes defined himself as a weekend farmer, and through family ties he has first-hand knowledge of the claims and struggles that are cultivated beyond the cities. This is precisely one of the last chapters of the exhibition, in which different conflicts are traced; on the one hand, from the posters of the Republican side that, during the civil war, encouraged farmers to fight fascism; on the other, with the cartoons of Joan Codina Donaire i Armengol, which parody some of the current demands.
“There is,” he comments, “a neo-bucolicization of the rural world. With the pandemic, many families decided to leave the cities and go to the countryside, but they often live there with their backs to it, they don't understand it. And the countryside has its contradictions, it can be wonderful, but also very unfair, like the cities.” The tensions between the countryside and the city and the idea that the rural world has become increasingly urban are evidenced by a drawing by Isidre Nonell, Pep Companys' photos of graffiti on the walls of agricultural warehouses or the poster that Perejaume devised for the Mercè festivities in Barcelona in 2004, in which the artist poses a series of questions that, more than two decades later, still resonate strongly: “Should we, artists, become farmers? Is a tourist who has been a tourist a farmer? Can someone who has been a tourist become a farmer again?”
Counterpastoral. Art and farming
Morera Museum
Lleida
12.03.2026 to 31.05.2026
