From Tokyo to Espluga: the traveling works of the Museums of Sitges

The National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Mapfre Foundation, the CaixaForum from Lleida and Girona, the Valls Museum, the Rural Life Museum of Espluga de Francolí and the Foundation Josep Pla de Palafrugell have been the recipients of the works cessions of the collections of the Museums of Sitges for temporary exhibitions during 2018. In total, 45 works traveled last year to different museums for different exhibitions, especially on modern art.

During the last quarter of 2017, the painting The partition of wine , by Ignacio Zuloaga, was ceded to the Mapfre Foundation in Madrid, to be included in the Zuloaga exhibition in the Paris de la Bélle Époque, 1889-1914 . The same Madrid center showed, between October 2018 and this past January, the work Maternitat (1908), by Joaquim Sunyer, integrated in the Redescubriendo el Mediterráneo exhibition, a tour of the paintings and sculptures of the end from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the 20th -Monet, Renoir, Sorolla, etc.- that turned the Mediterranean into an engine for the renovation of art.

The National Art Museum of Catalonia exhibited a series of six drawings and paintings by Ramon Pichot from Cau Ferrat, between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, at the Ramon Pichot exhibition , Els Quatre Gats à la Maison Rose , dedicated to the Barcelona artist, that was a transition between Impressionism and Modernism. This same sample traveled to the CaixaForum from Lleida and Girona, where the footprint of Sitges and Cau Ferrat was also visible. Most of the works assigned to the MNAC -including the emblematic Boulevard of Paris (1898-1901) - were also seen in Lleida and Girona, although in this last city added one more.

The international flagship of  the Sitges Museums collection was, between the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, Santiago Rusiñol. His painting Sunset (1899) traveled to the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, which was part of the Hokusai and Japan exhibition , along with works by Monet, Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin. For the first time in history, an exhibition of paintings examined the development of modern Western art through the perspective of the prestigious Japanese painter and engraver Hokusai.

The exhibition that received more works from the Museums of Sitges was that of Rusiñol i Casas per Catalunya en Carro, which was seen until January 14 of last year at the Museum of Rural Life from Espluga de Francolí . There were 36 works by both artists, as well as a drawing by Marc Terence Müller. The exhibition was the last of the Year Ramon Casas and presented both oils, as drawings, posters, letters, books and photographs from Cau Ferrat.

The Valls Museum, for its part, received three sculptures by Anselm Nogués for the exhibition Anselm Nogués: the forgotten sculptor of Valls, while the Josep Pla de Palafrugell Foundation (Girona) received two helmets from the World War I from the Cau Ferrat in the exhibition Half Europe falls: Impressions by Josep Pla on the Great War.

The works of the Sitges Museums have also been present at the temporary exhibitions organized by the Sitges Heritage Consortium, such as that of the Centenary Maricel, which closed this Sunday and showed the process of building the Maricel ensemble The sculptor Gustau Violet. Art, thought and territory, that gatthered 104 of his works and contemporary authors, in order to claim the work and status of Violet's cross-border artist; and Logicofobistas, 1936. Surrealism as a revolution of the spirit , a journey to the last Catalan Surrealism before the Civil War.