From Lorca to the caryatids, passing through Venice

 

The caryatid-women imagined by Gino Rubert, the abstract painting of Lluís Lleó, the thought of Federico García Lorca represented in an anti-monument by Eugenio Merino, a canon and anti-canon of art in Barcelona between 1978 and 1992 and different photographic visions of aspects of nature or the city of Venice: these are some of the proposals offered by Barcelona Gallery Weekend from last Thursday until next Sunday. This Art Barcelona initiative celebrates its tenth anniversary this year and includes numerous activities and presentations in the 27 participating galleries. Most of the exhibitions will remain open for the next few weeks. Below is a selection of some notable samples.

 

In the centre of the Eixample, ADN exhibits Public Bench, a proposal by Eugenio Merino, more verbal and sonorous than visual. It is an installation in the form of an anti-monument, which rescues from a certain oblivion a very important part of Lorca's thought, based on conferences and interviews where the poet expressed his social, political and humanist thought. The greatest lucidity is found in Alocución al pueblo de Fuente Vaqueros (September 1931): "I attack from here those who only speak of economic demands, without ever naming cultural demands. It is good that all men eat, but that all men know. Let them enjoy all the fruits of the human spirit, because the opposite is to turn them into machines at the service of the State, into slaves of a terrible social organization." And the wisdom continues on the top floor of ADN, with Robert Filliou's exhibition: "Art is what makes life more interesting than art". You can say longer, but not better.