The Art Museum inaugurates 'Esclats d'un instant. 90's The contribution of the artists to the Art Fund of the newspaper AVUI'

The Girona Art Museum opens the exhibition Esclats d'un instant on March 2. 90's The contribution of the artists to the Art Fund of the newspaper AVUI, which can be visited until February 2, 2025. Curated by Elina Morandi, it is the continuation of the previous exhibition, which could be seen at the Art Museum of Girona from February 25, 2023 to January 28, 2024, and which focused on the works carried out in the 1970s and which were given in the first call for support for the newspaper.

The new exhibition focuses on the other great stage of growth, during the 1990s, although donations continued to be received throughout the 1980s, albeit very measured and on a drip basis. In 1994, in the context of a renovation and relaunch of the newspaper, it was decided to grow this fund by incorporating the work of new generations of artists, this time under the curatorship of the historian Pilar Parcerisas. The collection of works, unlike the first, did not consist of a formally published request, but through direct requests by those responsible for the management of the Fund.

The reading of the two samples is considered as a single exhibition project, which is why both exhibitions have a single catalog with texts by Elina Norandi and the cataloging of all the works. The project of the Girona Art Museum complements and adds to the work that in this sense is promoting the Network of Art Museums of Catalonia for the recovery of women artists and for the compilation of their testimony, a project also entrusted to Elina Norandi.

The two moments, the 1970s and the 1990s, show a common fact: that although women supported the project with the same enthusiasm and interest as the rest of the artists, their contribution was not considered equally nor was assess its relevance when explaining this part of the history of Catalan art. However, at the time when the works that make up this second exhibition were given, the political, cultural and artistic landscape had already changed a lot and, as freedoms were achieved, the politicization of the citizenry decreased. Over the years, gender prejudices affected the dissemination and display of the collection, as it happened in all areas of society.

Elena Paredes. Performance.

In bursts of an instant. 90's The contribution of the artists to the Art Fund of the newspaper AVAI we can see works by Montserrat Acosta, Pilarín Bayés, Maria Bofill, Maria Teresa Codina, Colita, Montserrat Costa, Pia Crozet, Begoña Egurbide, Rosa Espinosa Pla, Josepa filella, Maria Girona, Kima Guitart, Casilda Huguet, Elisabet Mabres, Madola, Assumpció Mateu, Anna Mauri, Mariona Millà, Elena Paredes, Gina Portera, Anna Pujol, Maria Assumpció Raventós, Àngels Ribé, Amèlia Riera, Pilar Segura and Carme Serra Cantarell

The Avui newspaper's Art Fund has become the testimony of some historical moments and a broad summary of all the names of Catalan art, especially of artists active during the transition and the first years of democracy. All in all, since 2011, the number of occasions on which these works have been seen has been counted, some pieces that allow various readings due to the variety and richness of the ensemble. Starting in 2019, the Girona Art Museum began to investigate this background with a first exhibition, then entrusted to Pilar Parcerisas and focused on the transition from abstraction to conceptual art.

Last year, in 2023, the second exhibition proposal was presented, which, at the same time, is divided into two shows with a unique thematic axis and in terms of gender: valuing the contribution of Catalan artists to the formation of the Fund Art of the Avui newspaper and bring out their names, long silenced. Under the generic title of Esclats d'un instant and curated by Elina Norandi, the first exhibition was dedicated to the 1970s, to the founding moment of the newspaper, presenting a selection of 51 works by the most relevant artists of the age. Now, this second part of the exhibition project focuses on later donations and, especially, those made in the nineties.