Francesc Quílez The artist’s workshop: a multi-faceted space Ending this digression and getting back to the connecting thread of my discourse, I wish to demonstrate how this phenomenon of versatility allows me to make different approaches, and to take a very detailed look at the various facets presented by the motif to which I am…
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Francesc Quílez In the course of the nineteenth century, the traditional artist’s workplace was transformed into an interesting motif for the artistic practice of the period, acquiring a scenographic dimension that had hitherto been unexplored. The depiction of the workshop had in fact already been featured in some of the most outstanding creative episodes in…
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Francesc Quílez Only on very few occasions during his career as an artist did Fortuny develop the theme of the female nude. It is a genre towards which his attitude was always preventive and for which he felt no special predilection, except for two highly iconic productions that over time have become two of his…
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Francesc Quílez In a time of worry, such as we are currently experiencing, in which we are overcome with anxiety and on the horizon we see only the image of uncertainty and despair, humanity seeks answers, remedies to help it bear this heavy burden that weighs us down, limits us and prevents us from going…
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Francesc Quílez This last year, those of us who love the work of the painter Marià Fortuny have been very fortunate. Two temporary exhibitions have given us the chance to contemplate the talent of one of the finest nineteenth-century European painters. Since November 2016, the show A Time for Daydreaming. Andalusia in Fortuny’s Imagery has…
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Francesc Quílez Ramon Casas is a paradigmatic example of the modern artist in any literal sense of the term. Critics and historians have pointed him out as a great painter and the creator of some of the most emblematic and iconic works in the history of Catalan art. With his nonconformist attitude, Ramon Casas managed…
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Paris, circa 1889 A painter, who we cannot identify, poses seated before the camera lens of a photographer, whose identity we do not know either. The artist has a proud air about him, satisfied with the work he has just done and whose results he is showing in public. The roomy bright surroundings in which…
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At the end of the 19th century, the publicity poster reached a renowned level of popularity, becoming one of the main emblems of the modern society. The major commercial brands supported the development of posters, aware of the possibilities that, for the diffusion of the advertising message, they offered a very attractive visual resource. The…
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The collection of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya conserves a large number of works in which the image of the woman takes on a major prominence, and becomes an authentic advertising claim. Far from perpetuating the most conventional iconic stereotype that projected a fixed cultural cliché, which associated the woman with certain maternal behaviour…
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The society of the end of the 19th century didn’t hide its fascination for machinism. From the 1850s onwards, the universal expositions made room for the power of human ingenuity, with the desire to subdue nature. This attraction for the idea of technical-scientific progress was directly reflected in commercial art. Many of the posters from…
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