Exhibitions
The multifaceted legacy of Julià Riu Serra
The Montserrat Museum vindicates, on the twentieth anniversary of his death, the validity of a creator who explored sculpture, drawing, engraving, ceramics and applied arts.
The Montserrat Museum recovers the figure of Julià Riu Serra (1921-2006) with Riu Serra · The primordial future , an exhibition curated by Bernat Puigdollers that offers a broad look at one of the most unique and multifaceted artists of post-war Catalan art. The exhibition, which can be visited until September 13, does not intend to be an exhaustive retrospective, but rather to vindicate the richness of a career marked by mastery of the craft, constant research and remarkable creative versatility.
Born in Molins de Rei in 1921, Julià Riu Serra developed a body of work that traverses different disciplines, with sculpture as the main axis, but also with an important production of drawing, engraving, ceramics, painting, woodcut and jewelry. This diversity allows us to understand his artistic practice as a territory of permanent experimentation, in which materials and techniques are put at the service of a single will to explore the form and the human condition.
Trained at the Escola Massana in Barcelona, Riu Serra later maintained a close relationship there as a teacher between 1963 and 1985. During the 1950s he began to present his works in exhibitions and, in his first solo show, held at the El Jardín galleries, he already demonstrated his desire to move away from the artistic conventions prevalent during the early years of Franco's regime.
His contribution to post-war Catalan sculpture is characterized by the construction of his own language, interested in the essentiality of forms and in a profoundly humanist conception of creation. The exhibition at the Montserrat Museum allows us to trace this evolution through a set of sculptural pieces that dialogue with works made in other disciplines.
One of the most revealing aspects of the exhibition is, precisely, the recovery of his facet as a draftsman. Riu Serra was a sharp and ironic observer of reality, capable of approaching it from a critical but also humane perspective. His drawings thus expand the portrait of an artist who did not limit himself to investigating the possibilities of sculpture, but used different languages to express the same attitude towards the world.
The tour also includes the figure of Maria Rosa Barrera, the artist's wife and a prominent painter. The recovery and study of her work are part of the exhibition project and allow us to broaden our view of the creative environment of Riu Serra. The relationship between the two also had an artistic dimension: the sculptor illustrated several stories written by Barrera.
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