EINA honors Albert Ràfols Casamada and Maria Girona with the exhibition "Teaching is learning"

EINA, Barcelona University Center for Design and Art, inaugurates the exhibition Teaching is learning, a tribute to Albert Ràfols Casamada and Maria Girona on the centenary of his birth and which can be visited until June 9, 2023. This initiative is part of of the set of activities organized by the EINA Foundation, the Bassat Foundation and the Vila Casas Foundation to commemorate this anniversary.

Artists, painters, poets, humanists and pedagogues, Albert Ràfols and Maria Girona are fundamental to understanding the history of EINA. The desire to influence the gray society of the sixties will lead them to found EINA in 1967, together with other artists, architects, designers and intellectuals of the time. These are years of political agitation, cultural anti-Francoism and openness to new ideas and new visual languages. Design is presented as a territory of social incidence of art in everyday life. The ideals of the Bauhaus and the methods of the Ulm school are present in the training and inspire a teaching model focused on awakening the student's creativity without imposing aesthetic ideals or technical resources.

The exhibition focuses on his pedagogical contribution to EINA between the years 1967 and 2009, based on the teaching of design, art and the humanities and brings together works from the EINA Foundation's art fund in addition to extensive archival material linked to the artists. As Miquel Molins, president of the Board of Trustees of the EINA Foundation, explains, "the exhibition emphasizes its pedagogical aspect and explains the legacy they left us through the subjects they taught in the Design and Art studies of the "school".

Teaching is learning, which synthesizes the artists' performances, exhibitions and educational initiatives, is curated by Xavier Olivé, designer, student and teacher at EINA, and today a member of the Foundation's board of trustees; Josep Aregall, designer, student and teacher at EINA and Rubén Alcaraz, responsible for the EINA archive.

"EINA is a unique place, a university center, a space for lifelong learning and research, as well as a meeting point and confluence between artists, designers and thinkers. It is also an archive and a museum that reflects the history of this peculiar pioneering adventure, which a group of restless minds started at the end of the sixties", explains Rubén Alcaraz, one of the curators of the exhibition.

As Xavier Olivé explains: "After finishing their studies, many students became teaching assistants and then full professors. For their part, the teachers were students of new subjects that, later on, taught. Over the years, we were all united by a friendship. I taught different subjects myself so as not to turn teaching into a routine. Teaching is learning".

The exhibition can be visited from Monday to Friday from 10am to 7pm, and Saturday from 10am to 2pm at EINA Sentmenat (Passeig Santa Eulàlia, 25).

In parallel with the exhibition, a set of activities will be carried out:

Saturday, May 20
11am – Guided tour of the exhibition with Josep Aregall
11.30am – Guided tour of the art collection with Rubén Alcaraz
12pm – 'My garden in my hand': demonstration of floral art in tribute to Maria Girona and Albert Ràfols by Alfons Tost and Roser Bofill

Saturday 27 May
11am – Guided tour of the exhibition with Xavier Olivé
11.30am – Guided tour of the art collection with Miquel Molins
12:00 – Natural drawing class in tribute to Francesc Artigau, EINA drawing teacher, coordinated by Mar Saiz and presentation of the Friend of EINA award to Francesc Artigau, by Miquel Molins

Saturday June 3
10.30am – Exhibition of original documents from the archives with Rubén Alcaraz
11am – Guided tour of the exhibition with Xavier Olivé and Josep Aregall
11.30am – Guided tour of the art collection with Victoria Combalía
12.30pm – Guided tour of the art collection with Jordi Colomer
1pm – Exhibition of original documents from the archives with Rubén Alcaraz

All the people in charge of the visits have been linked to EINA as students and/or teachers.