Historical

In the mid-19th century, the commercial opening of Japan to the West cast a fascination for Japanese culture that was an important component of our Modernisme. Santiago Rusiñol was a collector of Japanese prints.

The collection of Japanese prints at the Museum of Montserrat comes from the donation of the Paris-based Catalan librarian Just Cabot (1898-1961), who came to Montserrat in 1962. It consists of sixteen engravings, eight of which are by Hiroshige, the Velázquez of Japanese art. The other eight are by artists of lesser status but of great interest. They all date from the 18th and 19th centuries, the golden age of Japanese printmaking.

They are prints of the Ukiyo-e style, which means ‘painting of the floating world’, a school which takes pleasure in representing scenes of everyday life, women known for their beauty or popularity, kabuki theatre actors, but also typical and popular landscapes and still the social life of the city of Edo which attracted a multitude of artists dedicated mainly to singing the delights of the good life of the wealthy merchants.

It is unusual to find in the West, and much less so in our country, large collections of Japanese prints, which is why the one at Montserrat Abbey is particularly interesting.
It is rare to find large collections of Japanese prints in the West, and even less so in our country, which is why the one at the Abbey of Montserrat is particularly interesting.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

Anton Lamazares exhibits a very personal proposal. His works bring us messages from some of the most outstanding mystical authors, among which St John of the Cross is prominent. Some of Christianity’s greatest authors are also present, with St Benedict and St Bernard.

The exhibition “Laus Deo” marks the recommencement of art exhibitions by contemporary artists at the Museum of Montserrat, which had been interrupted due to the pandemic. It is, therefore, a reaffirmation of the Museum’s long-standing commitment and firm pledge to connect with art at the forefront of the contemporary movement.

Givins 2012 - 2022
April 5 to june 30, 2024
Curators: Sílvia Muñoz d'Imbert and Santi Barjau

«Givins 2012 - 2022» is an exhibition of gratitude to all the donors who, with their generosity, have become part of the history of the Museum of Montserrat and, above all, a tribute to the man who has been the soul of the Museum for more than four decades, Fr. Josep de Calassanç Laplana.

The Museum's galleries will be open to an extensive selection of works donated between 2012 and 2022. For the exhibition, we conceived the selected donations along two different discursive lines, both in terms of their origin and chronology, which we wanted to interweave in the galleries to form part of a whole.

Montserrat, monastère millénaire
April 23 - June 26, 2024
Centre d'études catalanes, Sorbonne Université, París
Curator: G. Xavier Caballé

Montserrat is present all-around Catalonia. In almost any city or town it is easy to find representations of the Lady of Montserrat, churches with her name, tiles on the front of houses, as well as streets, squares and entities dedicated to her. And more intimate details, such as medals, key rings, holy cards that many of us wear next to our skin or in our wallets. And even today, many women are called Montserrat, Montse, Tona, Bruna, Muntsa, Rat ...

Montserrat has been with the Catalans everywhere they have gone. A hermitage close to Havana, an island in the West Indies, towns in Venezuela, Honduras, Chile. The name Montserrat always transports the Catalans to their country. A thousand years after the foundation of the monastery and sanctuary of Montserrat, it continues to be the spiritual reference for the Catalan people and their most important sign of identity.

In 1990, Montserrat received a donation from the architect Xavier Busquets consisting of a collection of archaeological pieces as well as paintings by the great figures of Impressionism and Catalan artists, with a significant number of works by Picasso.

Busquets and Picasso became friends, as a result of the commission for the friezes for the new office building of the Architects’ Association of Catalonia in Plaça Nova in Barcelona, which was opened in 1962. Due to Picasso’s involvement in the project, Busquets often travelled to the south of France, where the former lived for the last thirty years of his life. These visits, the aim of which was to follow up on the commission, were the beginning of a friendship, as he spent time and shared conversations with the painter and his last wife, Jacqueline Roque, as well as all the friends, artists and photographers who constantly surrounded Picasso.

During these stays, Busquets took the opportunity to have the works he acquired signed by Picasso. These form part of the collection at the Museum of Montserrat, although most of them are not displayed in the permanent collection. This is a legacy that is now being exhibited, on the fiftieth anniversary of the artist’s death, together with documentation and photos related to the donation, as well as books, images and press articles that contextualise the three main stages of this journey: the arrival of the donation in Montserrat, Picasso’s years in the south of France and the growing interest in Picasso’s work in B arcelona due to the driving force of the Sala Gaspar.

With the partnership of:

Palimpsest: What Lies Beneath

The word “palimpsest” derives from the Ancient Greek palimpsēstos. It literally means “scraped clean and ready to be used again”. Palimpsests are also ancient manuscripts drawn by scribes on parchment in which writing was removed, covered or replaced by a new layer of text. They reveal a history, just as a chalkboard sometimes allows us to see partially erased marks. Àlex de Fluvià’s paintings are reminiscent of palimpsests. They are constructed by overlaid erasures, strokes and gestures resembling written forms. Moreover, they also share the same intrinsic quality of retaining recorded traces and revealing an apparently hidden meaning. In the ambiguity that arises from the transparencies of collected layers of paint, each work in this exhibit reveals its own history and carries deeper layers of thought.

Àlex de Fluvià generates three dimensional spaces through a multiplicity of pictorial languages juxtaposed on his canvases. Creating a meticulously orchestrated fusion in which the universal and the particular coalesce. A palimpsest of the ancient and modern, in which his personal life experience is present and the traces of a collective memory exist. His art is an experiential cultural tapestry–densely painted and layered to mirror everything humans accumulate in their interior. De Fluvià exposes our experience by expressing ideas of transformation and uncertainty in a compressed modern era.

Jimena Flores
Exhibition curator

CATALOGUE

JORDI ISERN
MEMORY
Memory of my body. Memory of the abyss. Memory of Everything

The work of Jordi Isern can be described as the need to know beyond what our senses allow. It draws us in, disturbs us, and awakens an echo within us, as if we ourselves had traces of a prior knowledge within us that feel familiar. The three sections of this installation provide a window into the artist’s thought process and personal experience. In the first room, the set of faces and bodies represent Memòria del meu cos [Memory of my body]; in the second, the five painted beds evoke the Memòria de l’abisme [Memory of the abyss]; finally, in the third space, Memòria del Tot [Memory of Everything], we find the scrap of shroud in which he suggests the Absolute. Whether it is flat or three-dimensional, if we let it act within us, it ends up forming part of us, as viewers, invited to become an actor in this scenario. Jordi Isern is an artist aware of his footsteps and approach to transcendence, allowing the limits of knowledge to fade away and being able to perceive the final vision of the Absolute.

Jordi Isern (Barcelona, ​​1962) has based his artistic work in recent years on the reflection on the look of painting. How he and the public see it, and how the painting looks at us. The artist is concerned with generating a perceptive and transcendent climate for the viewer, and his exhibitions-scenarios aim to generate spaces where the work can be breathed deeply. This is also the purpose of this show at the Museum of Montserrat. Isern seeks a meditative experience, a reflective space about the meaning of human existence, evoking one's own body, fears and longings. “I paint to reconstruct I do not know what exactly, but I feel like a tracker, like an archaeologist who investigates, who looks for tracks, marks, clues of not evident dimensions in the simplest, everyday things, in the inevitable transit of bodies and things”, he says.

Jordi Isern lives in Sant Iscle d’Empordà (Girona, Catalonia). He has a PhD in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona. He obtained the grants of Plastic Arts of the Generalitat of Catalonia (1985) and the painting one of the Fundació Güell (1986). Among others, he has been awarded the 1st Honda Painting Prize (2007) and the 1st Painting Prize of the Vila Casas Foundation (2010). In recent years he has developed the Origin project at the Museu de la Garrotxa in Olot and in various areas of Girona. He has also participated in the Travelling Exhibitions of the Diputació de Girona.

J. Corredor-Matheos, exhibition curator

CATALOGUE OF THE EXHIBITION