The MNAC presents "Donation Benet Rosell. Deeds and journeys"

The MNAC presents the exhibition Donation Benet Rossell from March 11 to September 11. Deeds and journeys, curated by Àlex Mitrani.

Poet, filmmaker and plastic creator, Rossell (Àger, 1937 - Barcelona, 2016) is one of the essential figures to build the story of Catalan art in the second half of the twentieth century and protagonist of the emergence of conceptual practices and performance. Coexisting with his experimental cinematographic work, the artist showed a particular interest in drawing, wearing the craft of ninotaire with the same avant-garde spirit of Paul Klee or Saul Steinberg. He fused drawing with calligraphy, sometimes miniaturized (micrographs to look at with a magnifying glass), and eventually took it to the realms of painting. Central and marginal at the same time, with his radicalism and sensitivity, Benet Rossell establishes points of confluence between conceptual art and the most lyrical and plastic art.

The donation to the National Museum of an important set of his work by the artist's widow, Cristina Giorgi, allows us to appreciate the diversity of pieces and Rossell's great inventiveness. This is a key contribution to the Museum's post-war and second avant-garde art collection.

This donation allows us to see how calligraphy and writing are at the heart of his work. Rossell made very particular micro-writings ("blind drawings", he called them) that function as calligrams with which he evokes a tingling impression of reality. With humor and mystery, he invites us to immerse ourselves in a maze of signs.