The Foundation receives a copy of the catalog of the French Art Exhibition of 1917

Sunday, November 10, 2024

The literary historian Pep Vila has donated to the Foundation's library a copy of the catalog of the French Art Exhibition held in Barcelona in 1917, in the midst of the First World War.

The outbreak of the Great War (1914-1918) left Paris, the main artistic center of Europe, without the celebration of its famous art salons and with some of its artists installed in neutral countries. Spain was one of the latter, although, in practice, it was divided between Germanophiles and Aliadophiles. The latter achieved an extraordinary cultural diplomatic victory by managing to organize an exhibition of French art in Barcelona that hosted and replaced the suspended salons in Paris. It was inaugurated on 23 April 1917 at the Palau de Belles Arts and was the first time in history that the Société des Artistes Français, the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and the Salon d'Automne—the three great artistic associations of Paris—exhibited together.

The catalog lists 1,462 works of art, but it is known that many more were actually exhibited, as some of the artists submitted works that were not planned, included in the catalog with a single number. As Francesc Miralles explains in volume VIII of the History of Catalan Art in the chapter dedicated to this event, on the ground floor of the Palace and in the Hall of Celebrations, four large sets of tapestries—The King's History, by Lebrun; The Gallery of St. Cloud, of Mignard; The Old Testament, by Coypel; The Loves of Psyche, by Romain—masterpieces from the Gobelins, left visitors dazzled as soon as they entered. The Nationale occupied the first seven rooms, the Société des Artistes Français the next seven and the Salon d'Automne the last five. In the Gallery of the Queen Regent there was French painting, from Courbet to Cézanne. Other rooms contained the decorative arts, books, engravings and 200 medals of the top medalists.

From the Salon d'Automne, the art critic Joan Sacs (Feliu Elias) highlighted the works of Beaubois, Bonnard, Dunoyer de Segonzac, Guillaumin, Marquet, Matisse, Monet, Redon, Renoir, Rouault, Signac, Valloton and Vuillard, among others, while for the painter Joaquim Torres-Garcia the most interesting was the Queen Regent Hall, where you could see works by Boudin, Cézanne, Courbet, Daumier, Degas, Gauguin, Manet, Monticelli, Morisot, Pissarro, Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, Rodin, Seurat, Sisley and Toulouse-Lautrec. The response to the exhibition was very broad, and most magazines and newspapers in Barcelona published information at an unusual level, since for many Catalan artists and for the public in general it was the first time they could contemplate such a complete panorama of French art with the main figures of the fine arts who had marked the recent evolution and trends of Western art.