The myths are rewritten. The literature draws on other previous literature. And also art drinks from the art of other times. Between Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses there is an eternal literary dialogue. And in the same way sculpture has conversed with each other since its inception. Now, that talk has reached the Museu Marès in Barcelona.
The sculptor Frederic Marès (1893-1991) gave the city his sculpture collection, the largest in Catalonia, composed mainly of medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and 19th century carvings. The publicist Lluís Bassat has been collecting art from the 20th century together with his wife, Carmen. And now he has selected thirty sculptures from his collection by artists such as Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Pablo Gallardo, Julio González, Eduardo Chillida, Josep Maria Subirachs, Manolo Valdés or Joan Brossa to put them in contact with Marès' pieces.
The result of this initiative is Confluencies , an exhibition that will open its doors tomorrow at the Museu Marès and that can be visited until May 21 of next year. An exhibition in which this artistic dialogue appears in a palpable way.
There is, for example, an obvious connection between pieces that are so different in principle, such as the Mare de Déu dels Dolors, sculpted between 1618 and 1620 by Sebastián Ducete and Esteban de Rueda, and Lotura XIV [Nus XIV], a work by Eduardo Chillida created in 1991.
In the same way, Óvalos blancos , by Aurèlia Muñoz, a piece from 1981, has a lot to talk about with Sant Joan Evangelista , which Juan de Montejo sculpted in 1600. They are works with different themes and materials. Montejo's realism is almost the opposite of Muñoz's abstraction, and yet it is inevitable to think that both sculptures have things to say to each other.
The curator of the exhibition, Ricard Mas, pointed out yesterday during the presentation of the exhibition that Confluèncias is "an invitation to admire that dialogue that occurs through thirty sculptures from the collection brought together by Carmen and Lluís Bassat, one of the most complete in Catalonia in its field".
The exhibition provides, added Mas, "new readings of the Museum" and at the same time allows us to revisit the almost thousand years that the collection of sculptures gathered by Frederic Marès, also a prominent sculptor and "collector of collections" reaches.
”The idea came from the Museum and, specifically, from the new director, Salvador García Arnillas, who together with his team found some surprising parallels. I had never seen my collection together with old pieces and I have been impressed because now they shine like never before”, explains Bassat in a conversation with La Vanguardia. And he adds that “it has been a year of work whose result is really worth it. I'm excited" .
