Treasures

Beside the great compositions presented in official contests, Haes retained many studies painted during his field trips. This is the case of this landscape where the typical Dutch windmill becomes a simple anecdote giving prominence to nature and its changing states.

In search of light and scenes concordant with his artistic interests, Jaume Morera became interested in the winter of Sierra de Guadarrama. The discovery of the snowy landscapes allowed him to incorporate to his work a romantic rooted drama which became quite a distinguishing feature

In this work, Beruete uses the impressionist triangle of secondary colours coming from an accurate use of complementary colours. This is combined with an almost pointillist technique to represent a slight mist, rendered by applying white points into the blue sky.

This is to the illustration that Joaquim Mir made for the tale "The Three Travellers" published in Hispania magazine's 8th issue. Mir had a clear preference for poor characters of the surroundings of Barcelona, true archetypes of this phase of his artistic career.

Gypsy women, exotic beings with a quaint way of living, captivated Gonzalo Bilbao. In this case, portrays a basket carrier that moves with her family, defining a work which reveals his mastery of light, which flows from the landscape glimpsed through the branches of the great tree from the background.

This is one of the most successful works of the traditionalist period of Gili Roig, focused on the reproduction of archetypal figures of folk painting of Castilian tradition, in a way that clearly contrasts with the major themes of the Catalan paintings in the first quarter of the 20th century.

This portrait shows the direction that takes Pla's painting, much more receptive to the needs of the Mediterranean light and a freer treatment of the figures. Pla uses the dress of the woman to exalt the contrast between light and shadow, repeated by placing her face to the vertex confluence of lighting areas of the picture.

This artwork, which Biosca donated to the Museum in 1983, exemplifies the artist's concern for the treatment and articulation of the masses of the naked body of the woman. The simplification of forms refers to the Classicist severity to express a state of reverie, serene and intimate at once.

In 1903, Gili i Roig won Joan Llusà's decorative panel contest with this painting, a parable about the consequences of lust and a frivolous life formalized into a symbolist allegory, a variant of the characteristic eclecticism of his pictorial production of that time.

Based on the expressive possibilities of the clock spring unfolding in space, this work is part of the preparatory piece that Cristòfol publicly presented in Lleida in 1933 and opened his transit through non-figurative facets.

This work reflects a subversive approach compared to the previous production of Antoni Garcia Lamolla, although it had no continuity. The work includes a piece of newspaper as a generator and articulator, something absolutely new, which in turn sanctioned the revolutionary intrusion of reality amid painting.

Considerada la mejor obra surrealista de Lamolla, estamos no sólo ante una de las obras más importantes de la fase surrealista de su autor, sino también una de las mejores manifestaciones de este movimiento de vanguardia en Catalunya.

Organic forms —surely inspired by the sculptures of Hans Arp— lay on a very simple imaginary landscape. The mass in the center adopts a gesture almost human while remaining seated in a bucket under a sort of canopy, consisting of another biomorphic hanging form. This vision of puzzling reality appeals to dreams and is expressed with great lyricism, while freeing itself from any superfluous ornamentation.

Leandre Cristòfol's "Morfologies" state the beginning of a non figurative period marked by the development of two-dimensional oniric shapes, which eventually found themselves replaced by objectual works.

Made during the Spanish Civil War, "Ontic anticipation" is an assemblage of great lyricism that reveals apparently oblivious to the convulsion that defined the time of its creation.

This work hangs from a mechanism formed by two wires. One was previously coiled, so when recovering the initial state it generated a movement that curled the other thread, and so on. The result surpassed the idea of Alexander Calder’s mobile and stood in the field of continuous and constant motion, so that these works by Leandre Cristòfol have been considered an unmistakable precedent of kinetic art in Catalonia.

In the late 50s Ton Sirera began a work based on the macro-photography of the elements of nature. These became milestones of the Catalan Informalism, a movement in which Sirera participated almost in a paradoxical way, as photography is usually a "realistic" means of representation.

This series is the more coherent, abstract, and personal among Lluís Trepat's works. It is the culmination of a creative evolution process which started in 1956 and the milestone from which the artist would gradually return to figurative painting.

Some elements of this painting, such as the treatment of the boat's flooring and the reflection of the houses on the water of the channel are clearly a prelude to the informalist stage of Jaume Minguell, initiated by Grup Cogul (1964-1965).

After his stay in Paris, Víctor Pérez Pallarés was freed from the weight of symbolism to make way for an intense dialogue between the stain and the signs that the spontaneous gesture leaves on the paper, abandoning any figurative references until a later stadium in his career.

This is a very significant example of Albert Vives’ work during the final stage of his membership of Grup Cogul. It reveals a clear interest in matter and texture, and specifically relates to the changes that occur within Informalism in the early sixties.

Witness of the evolution of Ibàñez's work after the disbandment of Grup Cogul (1965), this artwork is still engaged within the Informalist parameters, although the experiments with collage and colour suggest the influence of a new aesthetic, tending towards Pop Art.

Around the seventies, Leandre Cristòfol was fully immersed in a truly experimental stage. Hence arose in the series "Dialèctica interior", made of structure-like artworks that can be turned into monuments.

Benet Rosell's artistic language is rooted in the study of Far Eastern calligraphy and ideogram alphabets, which he renders in an acid-burnt medium.

Niko was a doctor with artistic vocation that dedicated himself to "carigrafia" , an approach to psychological portraits based on a simplified and schematic definition of external and internal aspects of the personality of the portrayed, a concept very close to the historical avant-garde portraiture.

In the 80s, Àngel Jové returned to painting although maintaining an essentially photographic conception of the work and the chromatism, while the load of symbolic elements mixed with poetic and disturbing characters or scenery becomes increasingly heightened.