How can a painter (or a visual artist) capture a specific moment in the history of art or culture? On occasions it has been done through limited group portraits: Henri Fantin-Latour immortalized eight authors he admired, including Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, in his 1872 painting 'A Corner Table'. José Gutiérrez Solana recreated in 1920 the most famous literary gathering of his time, the one at Café Pombo, under the brilliant and always unpredictable presidency of Ramón Gómez de la Serna.
In Catalonia there are several notable examples. Beginning in 1899, Ramon Casas carried out the ambitious project of making rapid and incisive charcoal portraits of the most important characters in his environment. He published them in the magazine 'Pel
Casas portrayed the figures of the institutional and business world of Barcelona and Madrid, but also his painter friends and the cultural world of his time. In this way, he captured the “who is who” of modernism (the Rusiñol, Nonell, Maragall...) and also the emerging new generation, such as the writer Eugeni d'Ors, who were already preparing the move towards Noucentisme. The final collection of 207 pieces, donated by the artist in 1909, is part of the MNAC collection.
Four decades later, the Georgian painter living in Barcelona Olga Sacharoff portrayed in "El dinar de la colla" 46 members of the cultural world of her time.
In the years after the Civil War, Sacharoff frequented the social gathering that met in the Agut or El Canari de la Garriga. It was frequented by painters like Josep Puigdengolas, Josep Amat or Rafael Benet, musicians like Frederic Mompou and Eduard Toldrà, the publisher Joan Seix or the illustrator Mercè Llimona. And the journalist Luis Monreal, who documented these meetings that took place before the war “and continued to do so afterward with new additions. The novelty compared to other gatherings lies in the attendance of the wives”.
The painting 'El sopar de la colla', dated 1950 but in all probability painted before, formal and at the same time very warm, punctuated by the bouquets of flowers so dear to this practitioner of magical realism, also gives off a characteristic air of bonhomie. The character that appears in the window, an angelic presence, is the wife of the builder Miquel Barba, already deceased when the portrait was painted.
Faced with the warmth of Sacharoff, María Espeus practiced a cold and glamorous aesthetic in her portraits, with elegant black and white. The Swedish photographer settled in Barcelona in 1976 and began working in advertising. In the “Hello, Barcelona” exhibition, inaugurated in March 1982 at the Institute of North American Studies, Ella Espeus collected 175 portraits of the emerging young professionals of the moment. Designers and cartoonists, editors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, dressmakers, musicians and cooks, and people who just walked around the fashion sites.
The exhibition captured very well the pre-Olympic spirit and the vivacity and energy of the early 1980s, and in 1992 Espeus would be the official portrait artist of the Olympic Games ceremonies.
Gino Rubert from Barcelona, the last to venture into the genre, has collected 181 characters from the Catalan artistic-cultural world, although clearly focused on Barcelona, in his triptych "Vanity Fair", which after being shown in the MNAC's Gothic art room He is now exhibiting in the retrospective of the artist "Fatamorgana" at the Tecla Sala de l'Hospitalet center. And when it is closed he will travel to the castle of Perelada, where a suitable space is being set up for him.
“In my last exhibition at the Senda gallery, I had already presented two group portraits on the concept of the art gallery itself, the opening and the painting within the painting”, explains Gino Rubert. Based on an invitation from the MNAC to carry out a work that would be in dialogue with other pieces in the museum, he decided to work on an altarpiece that could be installed in the Gothic room.
"I set out to portray the world of painting in Catalonia taking as reference criteria that we could call 'objectives', such as those of art criticism, institutions and the market," he adds.
He resorted to the mixed technique of acrylic, oil and collage with photos that he has deployed in other paintings, and in already famous illustrations such as the Spanish covers for Stieg Larsson's novels. In "Vanity fair" the setting is a tower that from the views we can place in Pedralbes. On its terrace, or swinging from the sky, creators already disappeared appear: Fortuny, Picasso, Joan Miró, Ángeles Santos, Tàpies, Montserrat Gudiol. On lower floors the guests mingle. Almost in the center is the philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós, father of the artist, who recently died.
Scattered around the three floors are painters of different generations (Lita Cabellut, Miquel Barceló, Yago Hortal, Julio Vaquero, Phillip Stanton, Marria Prats, Bea Sarrias); museum directors (Pepe Serra, Marko Daniel, Elvira Elvira Dyangani Ose); gallerists (Carlos Duran, Joan Anton Maragall, Miquel Alzueta); patrons (Lluís Bassat, Antoni Vila Casas); critics (Victoria Combalía, Daniel Giralt-Miracle); other philosophers (Josep Ramoneda, Eloy Fernández Porta), the sculptor Jaume Plensa, the illustrator Paula Bonet, the journalist Pepe Ribas. A QR code next to the box identifies the models.
The piece was defined by Juan Bufill in La Vanguardia as "a suggestive multiple, unreal and accurate collective portrait: something between Bosco's 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' and Ibañez's Rue del Percebe" (by the way, the creator of Mortadelo and Philemon also appears).
In this surreal, dreamlike and hooligan event, people observe each other and talk; some play cards, others smoke, soak in a bathtub, break their chains, play chess, write, walk the dog or lock themselves in the bathroom. Some emerge headless; the painter Serra de Rivera appears stabbed on a table. Rubert self-portrays himself flogged by a gallery owner. He did not ask permission from any portrayed, "although one of them, when he saw himself, asked me to cover it up." The bottles of wine that animate the meeting, with the GR label, which coincides with the artist's initials, are from the Perelada winery, whose managers, upon learning of the project, decided to keep the painting.
"For me there is no work of art without a sense of humor," says Gino Rubert. When painting it I have not taken into account groups or families but personal relevance; although I did want there to be a certain gender parity, and many references to Barcelona: the landscape on the roof, the Bocaccio poster or a towel from BCN 92”...
Contemplating the differences in approach, from forty to forty years, between the approaches of Ramon Casas, Olga Sacharoff, María Espeus and Gino Rubert to the Barcelona artistic-cultural scene and its protagonists, is very illustrative of the atmosphere and the aesthetic and mental categories of each era.
