Sitges Museums presents the largest retrospective exhibition ever of Artur Carbonell, which fully captures all his facets: painter, theater director and set designer from Sitges

The Sitges Museums are opening the exhibition Artur Carbonell on 20 November. Beyond the Mask, the largest retrospective exhibition ever of Artur Carbonell i Carbonell (Sitges, 1906–1973), a multifaceted creator who stood out as a painter, theatre director, set designer and pedagogue.

The exhibition, organised by the Sitges Heritage Consortium, offers for the first time a complete overview of his artistic career, with more than 170 works including paintings, drawings, photographs, posters, sets and unpublished documents. The exhibition is displayed in two spaces of the Sitges Museums: the Sala Vaixells of the Palau de Maricel, dedicated to his pictorial work, and the ground floor of the Maricel Museum, focused on his theatrical and scenographic activity.

An essential figure of magical realism and surrealism

The pictorial journey reveals Carbonell's connection with magical realism and European surrealism, currents in which he developed a voice of great poetic and symbolic sensitivity. Among the most outstanding works are Portrait of Pere Armengou (1928), Portrait of Maria Dolors Bertran (1929), Two Figures (1931) and Christmas Eve (1929), from private collections and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Also present are pieces from the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, the Museu d'Història de Girona, Fons Santos Torroella, and Fundació J. V. Foix, as well as from other institutions and numerous private collections. The exhibition presents previously unpublished drawings and oils restored for the occasion, from family collections.

Carbonell's work is not alone in this exhibition, it is accompanied by artists from his creative context such as Joaquim Sunyer, Joan Miró, Federico García Lorca, Alfred Sisquella, Jaume Sans, Pere Jou or his friend Pere Armengou. With 110 plastic works, this section shows how Carbonell knew how to transform figurative language into a visual and emotional experience, placing Sitges on the map of European modernity between the wars.

The pioneer of avant-garde theatre

The stage area highlights his contribution as a pioneer of avant-garde theatre throughout the State. In 1930, Artur Carbonell directed and set the performance of Orfeu, by Jean Cocteau, at the Teatre Casino Prado in Sitges, considered the first avant-garde play performed in the State. Seventeen years later, in 1947, he again defied Francoist censorship by staging Doña Rosita la soltera o el lenguaje de las flores, by Federico García Lorca, the first performance of Lorca in the State during Francoism.

The exhibition presents scenography projects, models, original posters, stage photographs and educational documents that demonstrate his conception of the theatre as a space of freedom and total creation. Carbonell appears as an artist capable of turning the stage into a living painting and painting into a theatrical space.

A total and refined creator

Artur Carbonell is a key figure of Catalan modernity. Trained under the tutelage of Joaquim Sunyer, and in the context of Catalan painters who worked between new realism(s) and surrealism such as Josep de Togores, Joan Miró, Federico García Lorca and, internationally, Jean Cocteau and the German and French artists of interwar realism(s), he merged painting and scene in a unique and poetic language.

His works, now present in museums such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, reveal an introspective and sophisticated look, where Mediterranean serenity coexists with inner mystery.

A collective project

The exhibition has been curated by art historians Ignasi Domènech Vives and Mariona Seguranyes Bolaños, and has the collaboration of 18 institutions, 2 galleries and more than 30 private collections. Among the lenders are the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, the MAE – Institut del Teatre, the Museu de Maricel, the Biblioteca-Museu Víctor Balaguer, the Fundació J.V. Foix, the Casino Prado, the Biblioteca Santiago Rusiñol de Sitges and the Arxiu Històric Municipal de Sitges.

The catalogue, edited by the Consorci del Patrimoni de Sitges, includes texts by Ignasi Domènech, Mariona Seguranyes, Aleix Ibáñez and a prologue by Txema Romero, with reproductions of all the works and unpublished documentation.