Exhibitions
Nonell i Vallmitjana or the artistic view of the gypsy world of Barcelona in 1900
An exhibition at the Palau Foundation reveals the shared fascination with the suburbs, gypsy culture and the secrets of a broken friendship.
The Palau de Caldes d'Estrac Foundation hosts Nonell, Vallmitjana and the Gypsies , an exhibition that recovers the artistic and human relationship between the painter Isidre Nonell (1872-1911) and the writer Juli Vallmitjana (1873-1937), two fundamental figures of Barcelona at the beginning of the 20th century united by the same fascination: the Gypsy world and life on the fringes of the city.
Fellow artists at the Llotja and members of the Colla del Safrà, Nonell and Vallmitjana shared friendships, creative concerns and a unique perspective on the gypsy communities, which became the protagonists of their works. While the former captured this reality in paintings and drawings of great expressive force, the latter transferred it to literature through his stories about the Barcelona suburbs.
The result of extensive research by Julià Guillamon, with the collaboration of Joan Mar Sauqué, the exhibition provides documentation and unpublished materials that allow us to delve deeper into the links between the two creators and discover the causes of their sudden estrangement around 1906, five years before Nonell's death.
The exhibition, from May 30 to September 27, also broadens the view on the cultural and social context of the time, addressing the representation of marginality in modernist Barcelona and highlighting the figure of Vallmitjana as a sports patron and promoter of a prominent silversmith workshop where cups and trophies were produced, a space through which some of the most relevant sculptors of the time passed.
Nonell, Vallmitjana and the Gypsies brings together paintings, drawings, photographs, theatrical costumes, literary texts and an important set of documents and images, many of which are shown for the first time. The tour includes works by artists such as Ricard Canals, Joaquim Biosca, Carles Casagemas, Ramon Casas, Sebastià Junyent, Ignasi Mallol, Enric Pascual Monturiol, Pablo Picasso, Ramon Pichot, as well as by Isidre Nonell and Juli Vallmitjana themselves.
Beyond art, the exhibition proposes a journey to a vanished Barcelona and its social margins, through the eyes of two creators who turned a reality often ignored by their time into art.
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