Cultura de Catalunya increases the budget of the National Collection

• In 2022, the Department of Culture has increased its general budget and consolidated the extraordinary investment of 2021, allocating 2.2 million euros from the start of the acquisition of art
• In 2021, the Department of Culture acquired a total of 1,023 objects and funds, selected works by 99 artists and received 76 donations.

In 2021, the Department of Culture allocated 1,917,689 euros to the purchase of contemporary art, photography, comics and illustration and movable cultural property to increase the National Collection of the Generalitat de Catalunya. In total, 1,023 pieces were acquired, including works of art, objects and heritage funds, including works by 99 artists. 76 donations were also processed.

In 2022, the Department of Minister Garriga consolidates and increases the extraordinary budget for the year 2021, and is around 2,255,000 euros. As the art acquisitions are due, the purchases made with this budget will be made in 2023.

Today, the Minister of Culture, Natàlia Garriga, presented the 2021 acquisitions at a press conference at the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). He was accompanied by the director of Chiquita Room, Laura González, on behalf of the acquisitions for the Comprehensive Visual Arts Plan; the photographer Paula Artés, representing the acquisitions of the National Photography Plan; the journalist Jaume Vidal, representing the Comic and Illustration Commission; and the director of the National Archive, Francesc Balada, on behalf of the National Fund for the Acquisition of Cultural Assets

Within the framework of the Comprehensive Plan for the Visual Arts, the Department of Culture has acquired 44 works by 43 artists, 10 of which form groups, for a value of 508,983 euros. Priority has been given to the purchase of works by women artists and creators who have so far been under-represented in the National Collection. At the same time, risk and experimentation criteria have been adopted for the heritage inclusion of contemporary creation in public collections.

The National Photography Plan has bought, for an amount of 341,138 euros, 594 photographs by 47 authors. As for the Comic and Illustration Commission, the Generalitat has bought 131 originals for an amount of 122,245 euros. In the field of heritage assets, the Department of Culture has acquired 178 objects, lots and funds for an amount of 958,185.43 euros between purchases and trial fees, and 76 donations have been received. Finally, the Department of Culture has received 76 donations.

Contemporary visual arts
Thanks to the Comprehensive Plan for the Visual Arts, a new impetus has been given to the National Collection of Contemporary Art and the acquisitions and patrimonialisation have been reactivated with the purchase of works by Catalan artists or those linked to the context. of contemporary creation in Catalonia. Between 2016 and 2021, 1,480,249.23 euros were invested in six campaigns and 135 works by 115 artists were purchased. The works are deposited in the MACBA, the MNAC, and the museums of the Network of Art Museums of Catalonia.

During the year 2021, 508,983 euros have been allocated to the purchase of art and cultural assets for the National Collection of Contemporary Art, a figure that exceeds the 2020 campaign by more than 100,000 euros. works that will enter the museums of Catalonia include the following pieces: Reflexions blanc (2019), by Antoni Arola; Fets / Facts (2020), by Enric Ansesa Gironella; Selfportrait (1980-2018), by Eugènia Balcells; Initial series Blocs (2002), by Claudi Casanovas; S / T (1971), by Joaquim Chancho; S / T (1960), by Joan Furriols; and Automanifest (1967), by Antoni Padrós; a 2016 installation by Fina Miralles, The Altar or Phases of the Moon, Oil and Bread (2016), two sculptures and drawings by Joan Rom; the cinematographic projection of the Cambó legacy (2015), by Perejaume, and three sculptures by Parvine Curie (Arlette Martí, as she was known when she lived in Catalonia). This list is complemented by a set of documentation from the personal archive of Carles Hac Mor (1940-2016) acquired from his widow Ester Xargay, artist and poet.

In addition, the purchases for the National Collection of Contemporary Art in 2021 are completed with pieces by young professionals and other artists with little representation on the circuits despite the solidity of his work. These also include, once again, the representation of women artists: Alícia Kopf, Teresa Estapé, Olga Olivera-Tabeni, Antònia del Rio, Anna Dot, Vanessa Pey and Lara Fluxà. There are also pieces by artists such as Llorenç Ugas, Marc Vives, Enric Farrés Duran, Joan Pallé, Pep Vidal and the groups Eulàlia Rovira & Adrian Schindler, Mar Serinyà & Marta Vergonyós, Varvara Guljajeva & Mar Canet, Sitesize and El Palomar . There are also works by various mid-career artists, such as Nora Ancarola, Denys Blacker, Isabel Banal, Mabel Palacín, Marina Nuñez, Joan Casellas, Jordi Mitjà, Lluís Hortalà and Roc Parés.

Photography
The commission for the National Photography Plan, which met four times in 2021, issued a public call in which 115 proposals were submitted, of which 28 were authors, 74 authors and 4 were collaborative projects. Finally, for an amount of 341,138 euros, 44 projects were acquired, among those submitted through the call and those submitted independently by the members of the Procurement Committee. Of these, 6 are of unknown authorship, 5 are authors, 31 are authors and 2 are collaborative. In total, 594 works by 47 authors.

Given the pandemic situation, a great effort has been made to be able to reach more active authors, but the acquisition of heritage works has not been neglected, in order to guarantee their safeguarding and conservation.

Of note is the work of younger authors such as the work “Fuerzas y cuerpos” by Paula Artés which deals with the invisibility of the Civil Guard in Catalonia and in photographing the spaces in which the “Linde” project of Arnau Bach and Myriam Meloni draw a map of four peripheral neighborhoods in the northern part of the city of Barcelona that physically border on the geopolitical border of the city and the need to offer an anthropological and contemporary vision of this territory. the “Puber” series by Tanit Plana, which portrays adolescence and its concerns.

Of note is the work of Ferran Garcia Sevilla “Reconstruction - Photographic Collage”, 1974, which belongs to the beginnings of the author’s artistic career and is of hypnotic beauty or the project “761 AVC”, 2008 by Xavier Ribas where photographs of abandoned spaces, specifically the archaeological remains that are preserved in an underground car park of a shopping center in Tarragona. Not to mention the work “Anarchitekton Barcelona I” by Jordi Colomer, 2002, where he plays with the scale of a cardboard model that simulates a building and walks around the city, challenging the viewer.

The work of authors such as Mey Rahola and Palmira Puig, who stand out because they have paved the way with their own and full of strength, in the world of photography, at a time when photography was a marked world, has also been recovered. male, in the thirties the first and in the fifties, the second. Also worth mentioning is the recovery of some more historical and documentary works such as seven photographs taken by the Photographic Service Aviazione Legionaria della Baleari, in 1938, of the departure of the Balearics and the bombing of Barcelona and a Photographic Album of the Propaganda Commissariat - Catalonia-Ducatez with 80 photographs that the Generalitat de Catalunya gave to a delegation of French journalists who visited Catalonia in November 1937, and which are a unique document of the Civil War.

Comic and illustration
With regard to comics and illustration, the Department of Culture continues to work for the creation of a national comic book collection that preserves and disseminates an exhaustive representation of the most important originals of the authors of comics and illustrations. illustration in Catalonia. The aim is to preserve the Catalan cultural heritage representative of this artistic discipline.

In order to produce a unified story on comics and illustration in Catalonia, as well as to work on a policy of acquisitions consistent with the national collections, kept in art museums and the Library of Catalonia, in 2019 the Comic and Illustration Commission was born. As a result of this work, in the last two years an important set of works has been acquired following the criteria of representativeness in the story, opportunity and demands of the museum institutions. Important names in comics and narrative illustration of the country have been introduced, which allow us to make a journey, for now partial, but which will be completed in the coming years. In 2021, 131 originals were bought from Miguel Gallardo, Marika Vila, Núria Pompeia, Anna Maria Smith, José Escobar, Josep M. Beà, Micharmut, Miquel Fuster, Pere Joan Riera, for an amount of 122,245 euros.

One of the criteria that has been kept in mind is the perspective of gender and identities, on the one hand starting the purchase of women artists (initially Ana Maria Smith, Mariel Soria, Núria Pompeia and Marika Vila) and the l another with the search for pieces that show this diverse view of identities. In fact, it is expected that this 2022 will continue to be committed to equal representation of cartoonists in the National Collection.

Last year's purchases also focused on acquiring works by underground authors such as Gallardo, Micharmut, Beà and Pere Joan, and the 10 originals of Miquel Fuster's emaciated book 20 years living on the street. Among the authors, the acquisition of a work and an author who took a clear stand for the cause of feminism at the time, such as the Maternasis of Núria Pompeia, or the only self-portrait of the cartoonist Anna Maria Smith, stand out. which was overshadowed by the weight of his brother. Ismael Smith. The cover of her most important work, Matahari, which has been deposited in the MACBA, has been bought from Marika Vila.

Movable and documentary property
With regard to cultural heritage, the Generalitat de Catalunya considers the set of archives, libraries and museums throughout the country as the fundamental instrument for the preservation of heritage and for its access to the public. In this sense, one of the aims of the Department of Culture is to enrich and complete the heritage of the public collections of Catalonia through the National Collection. In order to have financial resources that make it possible, we have the National Fund for the Acquisition of Cultural Assets, a budget item intended exclusively for patrimonialization. The Board of Qualification, Valuation and Export of Cultural Heritage Assets of Catalonia is the body that reports on the interest and convenience of the acquisitions and on their acquisition cost.

In this framework, for the last two years, the latter two with a significant increase in budget, have been working on the recovery of assets from private to public, on the return of the scattered and on filling in the gaps or shortcomings of the collections. of museums and archives. Thus, in 2021, 178 objects, lots and funds were purchased for an amount of 958,185.43 euros between purchases and trial fees, and 76 donations were received. In the field of purchasing, priority was given to the purchase of that less represented heritage, such as the Renaissance, through the acquisition of the marble relief of Alfonso the Magnanimous attributed to Isaiah of Pisa and from Poblet, and the table of Sant Romà by Joan Gascó, an author to be vindicated, and deposited in the MNAC and the Episcopal Museum of Vic, respectively. Priority has also been given to photographic work and posters from the 20th century. Alongside these pieces, the acquisition of a mourner from the royal tombs of the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet and the acquisition of objects such as a Ripoll pistol, a Visigothic coin, a set of eight Masriera jewels or the large set of 204 glass negatives about the Spanish exodus to France and life in the camps of Algiers and Barcarès, by Auguste Chauvin.

Among the donations, a special mention should be made of a Capbreu de Sant Pere de Roda referring to Llançà, which is a parchment codex from the years 1307-1315, donated to the Department of Culture by Mr. Lluís Losantos Viñolas and destined to the Alt Empordà Regional Archive, the personal collections of Arcadi Oliveres, Oriol Bohigas and Montserrat Carulla, among others in the National Archive of Catalonia and the graphic collections of Gemma Sales and Jordi Vila Rufas in the Library of Catalonia.

The National Collection
The National Collection is made up of thousands of movable and documentary cultural assets that have been acquired over the years by different concepts of entry into the public domain: direct purchases, donations, preferential acquisition rights, legacies or donations.

The acquisitions are made with the aim of enriching and completing the heritage of the public collections of Catalonia, as a safeguarding operation and as a method of filling the gaps in the collections of museums and other heritage custody centers. . A large part of these assets are deposited in the different museums of the country –mainly the national museums and of national interest– as well as in the National Archive of Catalonia and the Library of Catalonia.

The acquisitions of the National Collection are guided by the sectorial promotion plans —Comprehensive Plan of the Visual Arts, National Plan of Photography and the Commission of the Comic and the Illustration— and the diverse commissions of acquisitions, integrated by professionals of the department, several museums and independent experts.