The Taüll Group takes over the Abelló Museum

The Abelló Museum in Mollet del Vallès is filled with ephemeral avant-garde and does so from one of the most iconic groups of post-war art with works by seven of the country's leading painters. The Taüll Group will fill the halls of the Vallés museum with pieces by Jaume Muxart , Josep Guinovart , Joan Josep Tharrats , Marc Aleu , Antoni Tàpies , Modest Cuixart and Jordi Mercadé .

From that famous, now iconic, snapshot of Francesc Català-Roca under the apse of Taüll to a group whose main purpose was to create an avant-garde formation for the Hispano-American Art Biennial in Barcelona in 1955. The photographic series is already gaining enough strength to observe a powerful tour of works, curated by Albert Mercadé and produced by the Abelló Museum itself together with the Valls Museum and Martorell Museum , with the collaboration of the Guinovart Foundation . The Taüll Group took the principle of defending new art against a so-called “false art” that was manifested in Francoist competitions of the time. Even more, Cesáreo Rodríguez-Aguilera, wrote of the artistic group as a political art group, where the claim will be its greatest exponent. The works of the seven artists were a plea against the commercial gaze, but it was also a reaction, even an action, to the official art of the city of Barcelona in the 1950s.

Dona amb colom, Josep Guinovart (1958). FMJA. Dipòsit Col·lecció Nacional © Josep Guinovart, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025

The exhibition creates a direct dialogue between the work and the visitor's gaze and does so by making it clear that it was a group without a unitary style, where each artist had their own way of creating, with a Tàpies linked to informal abstract canvases, through a more expressive Tharrats , or the return of the city of Paris by Guinovart (abstraction with figurative expressionism) and Mercadé (abstract painting with a calligraphic gesture and expressionist imprint). The conjunction and affinity of all of them was the vision with the Romanesque, an imprint that revives with the Taüll group, but is also translated and can be seen in works by Dau al Set or the avant-garde of Joan Miró .

Bouche sperdument, Modest Cuixart (1956). Fundació Cuixart © Modest Cuixart, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025

From friendship to union in a task in the center of Barcelona, together with the critic Arnald Puig and the Murcian poet Julián Andúgar , of a stylistic unity different from each other in seeking the renewal of art in Catalonia, and of photographs with one of the most emblematic works of Catalan Romanesque art, Sant Crist by Jaume Cuixart or the spectacular Els vençuts by Marc Aleu . The exhibition recovers a main production of the Catalan avant-garde after the period of the Civil War and the Second World War and can be seen at the Abelló Museum from March 13 to June 22.

The seven artists embody a new avant-garde era and a desire to demand a new formula when creating that was national, symbolic, primitive, transcendent and universal. They all occupy a capital space within the Catalan artistic panorama, but this Grand Tour of the Taüll Group through different museums will make known the historical relevance of this artistic group and delve deeper into the context of the fifties in the city of Barcelona and Catalonia.

Dona, Jordi Mercadé (1953). Museu de Valls © Jordi Mercadé, VEGAP, Barcelona, 2025