"Maria Girona. Works from the Bassat Collection" at the Museum Archive of Sant Andreu de Llavaneres

The Archive Museum of Sant Andreu de Llavaneres opens on June 16 Maria Girona. Works from the Bassat Collection, curated by Núria Poch. The collaboration between the Archive Museum and the Mataró Museum of Contemporary Art Consortium began in 2016 with a monograph by Albert Ràfols Casamada, which was followed by Josep Guinovart, José Luis Pascual, Helena Paredes, Héctor Ameal, the collective exhibition Dones pintades and this year, a monograph dedicated to Maria Girona.

This year 2023, the Archive Museum commemorates the centenary of the birth of Maria Girona (Barcelona, 1923–2015). In fact, it commemorates a double centenary, that of Maria and that of another painter, Albert Ràfols Casamada (Barcelona, 1923–2009), with whom he shared an artistic and life trajectory. They were two of the most prominent Catalan artists of the second half of the 20th century and both are widely represented in the Bassat collection, which has made it possible to pay tribute to them with two monographic exhibitions: Maria Girona at the Museu Arxiu and Ràfols Casamada at the Gaudí ship

In the artist's words “My painting is very emotional, but despite its apparent simplicity it is quite complicated. I'm looking for a simplicity of form that has a clear emotional richness." Maria Girona remained faithful to her artistic principles with a very personal figuration, with noucentist roots, although she is always attentive to the contributions of the avant-garde, as evidenced by the series of collages of great artistic interest that she developed during the decade of the seventy

Committed to the very craft of painting, she finds art everywhere. His is a sensitive painting, which seeks the essence, not of things, but of a certain relationship of oneself with things. He finds poetic motifs in everyday objects, in the everyday spaces of house interiors and in the landscape and works with them with his own palette of nuanced colors. His work creates a new reality, a personal universe, balanced, silent, but above all, lyrical. He finds the poetic reasons for what he paints while bringing poetry to his works. As she said herself, she seeks a simplicity of form that has a clear emotional richness.