The literary universe of Marcel Proust lands in Barcelona thanks to Espais Volart, from the Vila Casas Foundation. On Thursday, the entity presented the exhibition De Proust a Marsans, in search of lost time, with which it aims to delve into the world of the author through the works of the Catalan painter Luis Marsans. On the other hand, he also inaugurated a second exhibition, that of the architect Óscar Tusquets, called Bodies, Cities and Interiors in which the Barcelona native dares to challenge figurative painting.
Until January 15, the visitor will be able to enjoy both exhibitions. The first compiles 139 works by Marsans, including drawings, engravings, lithographs and paintings, as well as a series of objects that document the life and work of the Frenchman, such as a couple of handwritten letters.
Àlex Susanna, curator and art director of the Fundació Vila Casas, stressed that the reason for the exhibition, in addition to immersing oneself in the work, is to pay homage to the novelist coinciding with the centenary of his death. “And there is no better way to do it than with the help of one of his main plastic interpreters, the great Marsans”. In addition, he recalled that “Barcelona is the second great Proustian city after Paris, hence the importance of all this work being exhibited here”.
The also curator of the exhibition, Glòria Farrés, for her part, highlighted the autonomy of Marsans' work, which “takes on a life of its own and frees itself from literalness. Everything begins with a stain that is undone and ends in a drawing”. In addition, he advanced that the exhibition is divided into three sections that go from the basic role that painting and music play in the narrative world of the work, passing through the reception of the work of the writer in Catalonia whose influence led to the creation of the Library Proustiana Ferran Cuito and the Societat Catalana d'Amics de Marcel Proust.
On the other hand, regarding the Tusquets exhibition, the architect himself was commissioned to inaugurate it. The intention of the Barcelonan is none other than to make known the most intimate and least known facet of him. The visitor will be able to enjoy a selection of 200 paintings that the artist has also made over 50 years, between 1972 and 2022. "Many of them are unpublished, since they were in private hands," said Tusquets himself.
Susanna recalled that when they began to propose the project, she asked her "not to be the exhibition of an architect who paints, but of a painter, with no pieces of industrial design" and that it not be chronological, but by theme. The result is an exhibition that, in the words of its author, reflects "an expression of my love", such as the one he feels for Barcelona, for Benidorm, for classical architecture and for his second wife, Anna Bohigas, who died prematurely at because of a brain tumor, a process that he documented through his art and that can also be seen these days at Espais Volart.
Regarding the portraits, there is no lack of familiar faces, such as Leopoldo Pomés, Bimba Bosé or Eduardo Mendoza, whom he shows writing standing up. About Tusquets, the writer went so far as to say that his painting is "his autobiography or, rather, his way of understanding life and relating to his surroundings."
