BARCELONA, SPAIN.- Barcelona’s quest for peace will be taking on a new dimension this spring and summer.  The Museu Picasso, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (Macba), the Joan Miró Foundation and the Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (CCCB) will be reflecting upon the consequences of war, failure, and artistic utopia in four ambitious exhibition at the Forum de les Cultures, Culture Forum. 

 

The four exhibitions will be comprised of more than 1,500 paintings, objects, and historical documents.  Josep Ramoneda, the director of the CCB, explained that “In War”, which will take place between May 18th and September 26th, analyzes “Why there are more civilian victims now than military victims and why the front lines have erased. We live in history’s deadliest century ever; he stressed. The exhibition includes works from Kokoschka, Philip Guston, Léger, Malevich, Henry Moore, Robert Capa and Martha Rossler to videos by Marilyn Monroe and Marta Sanchez animating the troops.

 

The Museo Picasso will put together “Picasso: War and Peace” from May 26th to September 26th, with 320 paintings, sculptures, drawings and engravings that illustrate the moments in which the artist echoed the wraths of wars.  The museum director, Maria Teresa Ocaña, said that Picasso’s sketches for “Guernica” would also be there in place of the real thing, because it can not be removed from the Museo Reina Sofia de Madrid. The exhibition will be topped off with the sculpture “L’homme au mouton” and drawings that he painted on the power of art confronting terror, still lifes in Antibes, and the preparatory works for he panels “The War and the Peace” installed in the Vallauris Chapel. 

 

With the name “The Beauty of Failure: The Failure of Beauty” from May 28th, to October 24th, the Fundació Miró will exhibit 70 works of art by artists such as Artaud, Beuys, Duchamp, Mondrian and Nauman, amongst many others.  The museum’s director, Rosa Maria Malet, said that the exhibition will cover themes such utopia and “the etiquette of feeling”.  One example offered is the painting Cosmos and Damian”, 1973, by Joseph Beys made before September 11th, who said catastrophes of this dimension change the way art is seen. 

 

Also together with the utopia is the exhibition that the Macba will present from June 3rd to September 12th, with 900 paintings, sculptures, drawings and movies which will review the most key moments in the exchanges between art and poetry during the 20th century. The museum director, Manuel Borja-Villel” stated that “Mallarme’s poetry serves as a string of conduction between modern art history and its relationship with language”.  In the exhibition there will be work offered by the artists Apollinaiare, Braque, Broodthaers, Brossa, Duchamp, Fahlstrom, Fontana, Godard, Ulio González, Gris, Hamilton, Kandinsky, Klee, Léger, Magritte, Mallarmé, Manet, Miró, Oteiza, Picasso, Rauschenberg, Redon, Tápies, and Wall, among many others.