The MNAC reflects on 'What humanity?' on the human figure after the war

From October 27 to February 11, 2024, the National Art Museum of Catalonia presents the exhibition Quina humanitat? The human figure after the war. Curated by Àlex Mitrani, this exhibition brings together nearly a hundred works by leading Catalan, Spanish and international artists who, between 1940 and the mid-sixties, address the question of the figure and the human condition faced with the uncertainty, the mutations, the failures and the hopes caused by the Second World War and its prologue, the Spanish Civil War.

The curator, curator of contemporary art at the MNAC, explained that the exhibition, which mainly consists of painting and sculpture, starts from a historical episode: the Second World War and the Civil War. "We have gathered 80 artists with more than 120 works that address the question of how pain and suffering was inflicted on humanity, which made us rethink what human dignity consisted of."

Mitrani has said that What humanity? it is narrated from the representation of the victim, of "how this person has suffered a terrible trauma and how they can be given a voice". The curator believes that art can contribute to creating an image that gives visibility to "the injustice and suffering caused and can offer the possibility of a humanity that can dream of a cure and a reconciliation".

What humanity? brings together very diverse works to generate parallels and contrasts between referential artists and minor or marginal figures, but of great aesthetic and communicative value. In this sense, it presents aesthetic proposals that serve as a witness to an era and that have the potential to have a communicative impact on the current viewer.

This project aims to cross different layers and stories in order to highlight core problems such as the disintegration of classical humanism or the construction of a new subjectivity through pain and hope. A whole series of more specific but suggestive topics are also opened up, such as the relationship between the body and consciousness, the possibility of heroism, the function of the grotesque, the image of the monster, the nostalgia for beauty or the communicative function of the face.

The project represents a new step forward in the construction of the post-war and second avant-garde narratives that the museum has been promoting for years, in this case with an important commitment to place the figures active in Catalonia in a European and international context and vindicate their quality .

Some of the artists whose work can be seen in the exhibition are Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Antoni Tàpies, Mercè Rodoreda, Joan Ponç, Josep Maria Subirachs, Josep Guinovart, Roberta González, Pablo Picasso, Antonio Saura, Manolo Millares, Jorge de Oteiza, Oswaldo Guayasamín, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Zoran Music, Andrzej Wróblewski, Albert Giacometti, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, Renato Guttusso, Marino Marini, Germaine Richier and Bernard Buffet, among others.