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1. Lita’s childhood, far from being a bed of roses, was marked by abandonment and poverty. Surviving on the streets of Barcelona, Lita tells of this time: “I didn’t go to school, I was a street child like many others. I did little jobs for prostitutes, they gave me money to buy packs of cigarettes, sandwiches, condoms, earrings… and I kept the change. Many times I slept on the street.
2. Lita revealed her vocation as an artist after discovering the great masters such as Goya, Velázquez and Rembrandt at the Prado Museum. In fact, according to his biography, the shock he felt before Rubens’ “The Three Graces” “was the trigger for his decision”.

3. As she herself acknowledges, Rubens and Velázquez impressed her for their beauty and magnitude, but in front of Goya she shuddered to understand perfectly what the paintings of the Aragonese master were shouting, since she herself lived in her own flesh the delirium of the Goyaesque universe.

4. One of the hallmarks of Lita’s style is undoubtedly the technique she has developed, based on a variant of the fresco painting technique that, simulating the effects of “craquelé”, gives us the possibility of creating a new style. evokes the fragility of life and the scars it leaves in its wake.

5. The intense emotional charge with which his works question us comes to life thanks to a duality that exists in all his work: the deep knowledge and mastery of the academic drawing of the great masters, together with the rough and instinctive strokes of artists such as Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud or Pollock, governed by the inner energies that are born from the artist himself.

To think of tapestry is to take a journey through the history of art, tradition and craftsmanship. Its functional character, designed to protect from the cold and humidity of the great walls of castles and fortresses, has never been at odds with a careful aesthetic taste, a characteristic that has elevated tapestries to the category of art, thus arousing the curiosity of great artists who immortalized their works on the fabric.

On September 14, Setdart, features two masterpieces of tapestry art, both from Aubusson, a French municipality with a long tapestry-making tradition dating back to the 16th century. Over the centuries, this area has become, due to its quality, one of the reference centers for the creation of tapestries. It is the only place in the world where all the trades related to the manufacture of tapestry converge in the same space, from obtaining the raw material to the sale. In addition, Aubusson has a Museum dedicated to tapestry and in 2009 it was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

France, a leading country in the creation of tapestries, had numerous manufactories spread throughout its territory. One of the most appreciated factories was Gobelins, located in Paris and linked to royalty. His production became famous for the use of scarlet red. Founded in the 15th century, the Gobelins workshop achieved a great mastery of color, bringing nuances in the dyes of silk and wool, which brought these materials closer to the qualities of painting. Surviving all the events of France’s turbulent history, the manufacture is still alive today.

French workshops, such as the aforementioned manufactories or those of Beauvais and Arras, competed with the deep-rooted tradition of craftsmanship in the Low Countries. In the 16th century, Brussels and Antwerp became the two most important cities for tapestry making. In addition, Antwerp became the largest center for the commercialization of tapestries, distributing them throughout Europe. The style of this area managed to spread rapidly thanks to the political and economic relations with the Spanish Crown and the size of the kingdom. This school stood out for the use of high-wrap tapestries, which allowed the creation of large works and were characterized by the presentation of the scene within a large frame simulated in the tapestry itself, decorated as a border with fruits, flowers and elements inspired by classical antiquity. In the 17th century, its popularity declined and in the 18th century, tapestry manufacturing ceased in this area.

The history of tapestry is long and, in parallel to that of painting, it has been able to rejuvenate itself and adapt to modernity thanks to the work of tapestry artists and the incursions of artists such as Braque, Joan Miró, with his famed “Tapís de Tarragona” created in 1969. o Robert Indiana (Lot: 35222965). Today, artisans continue to keep the tradition alive and make it accessible to the public, thanks to workshops such as the Real Fábrica de Tapices, located in Madrid, or the Casa Aymat in Barcelona.

Seventeenth century tapestries, baroque sculptures, high period ceramics, portraits, paintings on glass, table clocks, niches, important polychrome olotine beds of the eighteenth century … are some of the pieces that make up the private collection that we present at auction on September 14 and 15.

This collection, treasured in the same family for several generations, was divided between two houses: a more bourgeois construction in Barcelona and a summer house in Tossa de Mar, a small fishing village on the Costa Brava made famous by Ava Garner when in 1950 she filmed several sequences of the movie “Pandora and the Flying Dutchman”, a time when she was Frank Sinatra’s partner, with images of their love walking around Tossa de Mar that went around the world.

Not unnoticed in this collection is the abundance of works related to the sea: seafaring trunks of the seventeenth century that retain their original polychrome, models of ships, engravings or baroque paintings of saints with seascapes in the background. Facts like this help us to know the people behind a collection, showing us in this case the relationship of this family with the fishing industry and also their love for seas and oceans.

The landscape, in its broadest conception, has represented an unlimited source of inspiration and creativity for artists. An immense workshop where unique conditions come together to respond to their artistic needs. Its changing condition, its lights and shadows, its silences and murmurs, continually rediscover it for us, making it a perfect setting to show some of the great questions that have marked the history of art. It is not surprising, then, that landscape has become one of the main creative engines of the great masters of painting, giving rise to some of the greatest works of all time.

In this regard the paradisiacal landscapes that the island of Mallorca offers us have been the scenery where many artists, writers and poets have found an inexhaustible source of inspiration. Especially with the arrival of the 19th century Mallorca became one of the favorite destinations for artists who, fleeing from the phenomenon of the Industrial Revolution, sought in Mallorca that idyllic vision of exuberant and unspoiled nature that romanticism had fostered. As key pieces in a whole generation of artists who settled in Mallorca between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the light and the Mediterranean landscape will be the living testimony of the new directions that painting would take from then on.

In fact, we only have to think of the great Catalan landscape painters such as Anglada Camarasa Joaquim Mir, Eliseo Meifren or Tarrassó whose respective stays on the Balearic Island transformed forever their way of understanding landscape painting, allowing them to find their own language, modern and original, full of light, color, sensations and shapes that gave life to some of their best and most valued creations.

In all of them, we can see how one of the most striking aspects of their Mallorcan period is the particular use they will make of color. In the case of Tarrassó this aspect is especially visible thanks in part to his stay in Paris, where the chromatic Fauve exaltation was engraved in his retina. In his continuous experimentation with the landscape and its colors, Tarrassó visited Mallorca for the first time in 1935. From then on, he would be captivated by the expressive possibilities that his natural landscape offered him.He established a strong bond that led him to develop a large part of his production on the island. This is the case of the oil on tender “Cala Lluch Alcari” whose landscape transmits the impetuous force of nature and the telluric protagonism of the island through the power of a light converted into color spots as energetic and courageous as deeply sensory. Your artistic personality marked by a deep obsession for chromatism is transformed in works like the present one, in bursts of vitality where the architectures of his leafy landscapes appear completely integrated in a harmonious but wild nature. In the same way, mountains, sky and sea merge in an endless number of vigorous tones and thick spatulate with which it builds a certain depth and introduces us to a fully autonomous setting.

As the impressionist master August Renoir said, “I like the painting that makes me want to walk in it”. And it is precisely for this reason that in front of Tarrassó’s work we feel conquered.

Pocket watches have always been considered a symbol of dignity and wealth, being an indispensable accessory for the wealthy classes.

Clocks first appeared in France in the 15th century, although the creation of pocket watches with an ovoid shape is attributed to the German Peter Henlein of Nuremberg. The pocket watch with the style we all know came in the 18th century thanks to the introduction of the vest, since the rounded and flat shape makes it perfect for inserting it in the pocket without damaging the fabric.

At first they were worn around the neck with a chain, or around the waist with a brooch or chatelaine, made up of several chains from which small perfumers, stamps and other accessories were suspended, in addition to the watch. From the 19th century onwards, watches hung from fob watches and were kept in the vest, a men’s garment that became fashionable in this century.

In our next watch auction we can find a good selection of fob watches and chatelaines, which can help us both to wear our watch with elegance, and to enrich our outfit, with the chains that complement this type of watches. Finding a balance between classic style and steampunk attire, and much more current, is not as difficult as one might think.

For a more casual look, clip your pocket watch to your belt or use clip-on chains or belt hooks.

The fob is a dangling chain to hold the pocket watch, it can hang outside the belt or drop down a little. It can be clipped to the pocket opposite your dominant hand to make telling time easier. If you are going to wear a shirt, you can also pass the chain through one of the lower buttons of the shirt. We can even use the fob as a neck chain, and thus give our outfit an air of elegance.

Our pocket watch can also be hung on a Chatelaine, which is an ornament worn by both men and women and usually attached to a belt or pocket, with chains with hooks to hang small items such as watches, keys, stamps, tablets, scissors and wallets. The word chatelaine, or castellaine, is derived from a word meaning the keeper of a castle, and originated in Medieval France, therefore in origin, it was the person in charge of the keys. During the 18th century, chatelaines were particularly popular.

The best ones were made of gold and the cheapest ones, of a yellow alloy called pinchbeck (similor in Spanish) in honor of the inventor of the material, and consists of an alloy of 10% zinc and 90% copper with which the color and brightness of gold is obtained.

Some Chatelaines were decorated with embossing or enamel and depicted biblical, mythological or genre scenes, others were inlaid with agate and, towards the end of the 18th century, some were adorned with cameos in a neoclassical style.

Several Chatelaines are up for bidding in our next watch auction, and it may be time to get one of them, as they can give a special personality to your outfit.

Since the Renaissance with the Medici in Florence and the Sforza family in Milan, Italy has been the cradle of the great artists in Europe.

Great creators have been setting international trends to this day.

Italian goldsmithing is one of the wonders of Made in Italy.

Perfect fusion of tradition and modernity, it synthesizes the love of beauty with artisan experience and the ability to preserve ancient knowledge that has made Italy one of the world leaders in the production of jewelery and goldsmiths.

In Italy there is a flourishing luxury market, of international fame, represented by the so-called distretti (literally district, referring to important production areas) for gold, especially that of Valenza ., which is one of the best known and most important in the international jewelery sector. The district de Valenza includes eight neighboring municipalities where high-end jewelery and goldsmiths are produced and sold.

The city, which will be included among the places of particular interest in the Milan Expo, opened its Gioiello Museum (Museo de la Joya) in 2015.

The small town in Piedmont is the one with the highest density of goldsmiths in Italy, the largest number of artisan companies in goldsmiths and jewelers, and combines the solid tradition of high craftsmanship with a great capacity for technical, stylistic and material innovation. The high level of design, a lively production network and an internationally renowned fair, as well as its training centers and a strong goldsmith tradition eradicated in the territory, make Valenza the cradle of jewelery in Italy and an international benchmark.

Goldsmith crafts are one of the most widespread professions in Italy, with deep local roots and regional specializations, where companies are often family-owned and make custom-made jewelry for their clients. This typically Italian artistic vocation is illustrated by numerous localities and goldsmith districts.

Sophistication, craftsmanship, independent spirit, love for detail and, above all, for the high sense of delicious femininity and love that a jewel must translate: these are the keys to becoming one of the greats. Vendorafa has managed to combine all these criteria in its pieces.

Vendorafa Lombardi jewelery pieces they are born in essential ways: organic patterns in continuous harmony with intuition and experience, research and creativity. The desire to explore new planning routes and new manufacturing strategies generates harmonious solutions and original tactile effects.

Vendorafa creations are conceived, created, designed and made with Italian hands, heart and soul.

The work, made exclusively by hand, enhances the material value of gold, its light and its aesthetic warmth.

More than sixty years of jewelry made in Italy thanks to the passion of expert goldsmiths. Since 1951, Vendorafa has been creating and producing collections that are known and recognized as a sign of Made in Italy style and excellence.

Considered by international critics as one of the great creators of Spanish art in the last decades of the 20th century, Víctor Mira reflected in his different artistic facets the existential torment that accompanied him throughout his life . Qualified as a transgressor, eccentric, visionary, weird, mystic and enlightened, Mira was above all an artist who delved through his art into the depths of the human being. His work, as heartbreaking as it is poetic, acquires a violent spirituality whose feeling is reflected in this revealing statement: “as a man happiness is desired, as an artist I am not interested and I am dominated by the artist”. Under this premise, Victor Mira transformed pain into a philosophy of life that would undoubtedly become his everlasting source of inspiration. And it is precisely this aspect that moves us in his work: the brutal and sincere contemplation of a soul, that of the artist, in which loneliness, inner ordeal and death are revealed to us as the only and unappealable certainties of life.

In her creative universe, Mira constantly turns to the cultural references that she absorbed with voracious curiosity from literature, cinema and music, as well as from religion and philosophy.Thus, he has created a particular compendium of concerns, reflections and obsessions that are ostensibly manifested in his pictorial works.

In this sense, the works under bidding allow us to trace a journey through the iconographic and plastic universe of Mira, who from his beginnings developed his work in series that overlapped in time. In them we can glimpse the Aragonese artist’s constant fondness for the primitive and that link with the origins of humanity that he found in the cave paintings. In series such as “Death Paintings” Mira summoned a universe inhabited by archers, shamans and nomads who, with their arms raised as a sign of offering, celebrate enigmatic ceremonies.

Mira also developed in parallel a type of surrealist landscape visible in his series “Cantabrian Women”. In these works we will see an endless parade of animals and human figures that, mating or gathered next to the trees of science and life in the Garden of Eden, take us back to the origins of humanity and to that lost Paradise that acts as a metaphor for an artist who, through his work, pursued in an eternal search for the way back home.

On the other hand, the theme of still lifes occupied a special significance within Mira’s artistic corpus to the point of becoming another icon of his career. Following a variegated aesthetic typical of expressionism, the artist approaches the tradition of baroque vanitas, introducing significant elements such as the crosses, the thalamus or the skulls that remind us of the finite nature of time and the inescapability of death.

It is also worth mentioning the continuous references to other disciplines to which, as in the case of music, he dedicated several series. In fact, from the 1990s onwards, Mira will produce an extensive body of work based on Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in which the artist, reducing his palette to the trichrome of black, red and yellow, represents the four notes of the initial motif of the score, whose significance has traditionally been associated with the idea of destiny.

In an era in which the great deeds and heroic feats of romanticism seem to have no place, Victor Mira embodied like no one else the figure of the outsider, the cursed artist who, as is evident from the image of his characters, lives apart from everything and everyone, following only the dictates of a deeply restless and nonconformist spirit that he carried with him to the ultimate consequences. That complex spirit with which he gave birth to an excellent metaphor of death, as lyrical and beautiful as it is sordid and stark.

Maricel Museum and Cau Ferrat Museum (Sitges)

For beach and good weather lovers, Sitges is one of the favorite destinations. But this charming village on the Catalan coast is much more than that. In fact, since the late nineteenth century it became one of the most important artistic references where some of the most renowned artists in the international modernist panorama of Catalonia, such as Santiago Rusiñol and Ramon Casas, settled.

Part of his legacy can be found in museums as representative as the Cau Ferrat, which was, in fact, Rusiñol’s own house-workshop. In it, you will find the collections gathered by the artist himself, whose collecting zeal made this place a temple for modernism and that will not leave you indifferent. Among the most relevant artists in the collection, you will find works by Darío de Regoyos, Ramón Casas, Zurbarán or Picasso, among others.

Another space that houses more than 10 centuries of history through its pieces and paintings is the museum Maricel. In its rooms you will be able to enjoy contemplating works of artists as recognized and valued as Marià Fortuny, Santiago Rusiñol, Josep Llimona, Arcadi Mas i Fontdevila, Joan Rebull, Pere Pruna… in short, a privileged showcase of the great Catalan artistic references. Artists that, in addition, you can find recurrently in our auctions.

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Dalí Museum (Figueres)

In Figueres, in the province of Girona, we find the museum dedicated to the most eccentric and surrealist artist of the 20th century, Salvador Dalí. In his hometown, the Dalí Theater-Museum is one of the places you can not miss, either for its monumental surrealist morphology, for the pieces it houses inside, or because the remains of the artist himself rest there, under a slab without inscription.

Designed to be a completely immersive experience where every detail transports us to the deepest Dalinian surrealism, its 22 spaces are configured so that the viewer can make the tour in a totally free way, without following a chronological or thematic axis.

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Gaudí Centre (Reus)

Opened in 2007, this cultural center in the city of Reus is configured as a space where art and technology merge to make available to visitors the life and work of the architect Antoni Gaudí.

Located in the heart of the old part of the city, you can immerse yourself in a myriad of sensory and interactive experiences, thanks to the latest technology available in the center. Can you imagine playing with space, light or water as the modernist genius did in his creations? Thanks to its multiple audiovisual resources, it is now possible to delve into the secrets of its architecture and its personal artistic imagination.

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Sanctuary of the Mare de Deu de Montserrat (Montferrí)

Known as “the other holy family” in the small town of Montferrí, province of Tarragona, is the Santuari de la Mare de Deu de Montserrat, one of the most outstanding modernist works of the architect Josep Maria Jujol, who worked with Gaudí on the facade and decoration of buildings as admired as the Batlló house and La Pedrera.

The construction of this modernist chapel began in 1925, but was not completed until 1999. This point of connection with the Sagrada Familia is not unique, as its morphology also resembles, in reduced dimensions, Gaudí’s cathedral.

During the visit you will be able to appreciate that it is located far from the urban center, on top of a hill and surrounded by vineyards. The inhabitants of Montferrí, in gratitude for their grape harvests, went on pilgrimage to Montserrat. This sanctuary is undoubtedly a modernist jewel that preserves its naturalistic spirit.

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Diocesan Museum (Lleida)

Finally, for those who prefer to spend their vacations away from the heat of the beach, enjoying the countless hiking trails offered by the interior of Catalonia, the city of Lleida is home to one of the greatest treasures of the province, the Diocesan Museum.

With an exhibition that brings together more than a thousand objects, this museum will allow you to take a journey through the history and heritage of Lleida, from the Bronze Age to the nineteenth century. All this thanks to the centenary collections it holds, such as archaeology or the Cathedral of Lleida, whose exhibition promotes the values of heritage and culture, touring the history and art of Lleida.

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Many of the main Spanish coastal settlements have existed for more than two thousand years, including major cities such as Tarragona (Tarraco), Sagunto, Cartagena (Cartago Nova), Malaga (Malaca) and especially Cadiz, the oldest inhabited city in Europe, with more than three thousand years behind it.

On the Catalan coast we find one of the first Greek colonies of the peninsula, Empúries. The very name of the city indicates its great function as a port of commerce. This Greek colony became a gateway to the Mediterranean for the people living on the peninsula. Goods arrived there from Greece and local minerals and crops were exported from there. The cosmopolitan atmosphere of the Greek culture was implanted in the region and evolved over the centuries by the different cultures that populated it. Today, we can visit a dreamlike place where Greek and Roman ruins open up with the sea as a backdrop.

Amphora; Greece 4th century B.C. Similar pieces would reach the Spanish coasts from the commercial relations between the Greek colonies and the peninsula. Lot sold at Setdart for 12.500€.

The province of Cadiz has an exceptional coastline, both for its natural beauty and the purity of the environment, and less invaded, fortunately, by the footprint of man. Cultures such as the Phoenicians, Greeks or the legendary Tartessians chose the area around Cadiz for their settlements.

In the inlet of Bolonia, near Tarifa, the Roman city of Baelo Claudia is located. The crystal clear waters, the fine white sand, as well as the dunes and pine forests, are the scenario where a city emerges that meets the perfect requirements of a typical Roman city. The streets perfectly gridded, divided by the cardo and decumanus, the houses with the courtyards as the heart, the theater, baths, forum and even an aqueduct. Although the foundation of the city dates back to the 2nd century B.C., there is a precedent of a Punic settlement. Its two great assets were, on the one hand, its port, fundamental for its proximity to the African coast, and on the other hand, the “garum” which was a fish preserve made in local factories and exported throughout the empire, being one of the most consumed products of its time.

In the north of the peninsula, other peoples developed their cultures, such as the Celts in Galicia. In the province of La Coruña is the castro of Baroña, located on a rocky promontory that forms a peninsula. The layout of the settlement has a clear defensive character. The dangerous Galician sea and two walls protected the houses built with the characteristic circular shapes of the castreña culture. Its state of preservation is exceptional, we can walk among the houses and alleys of an Iron Age settlement of more than twenty-one centuries ago. Ancestors of today’s Galicians, its inhabitants were the product of the union of Iberians and Celts from northern Europe who migrated to the Spanish coast from as far away as Britannia.

Knight togado, Imperial period, 1st-2nd century A.D. These sculptures could be found in most of the forums of the Roman cities of Hispania. Lot for sale in Setdart.

The great cultural heritage of Spain is in every corner of the country, the antiquity as we have seen, emerges bringing to light unparalleled archaeological treasures in the world and available to everyone. We can practically spend the usual day at the beach next to the ruins of the mythical Roman or Greek past. These deposits are just a small sample of what we can still find along our coasts, in the most unexpected places.

“Turner. Light is color”, MNAC

The evocative and romantic landscapes of William Turner are the main protagonists of this exhibition organized by the MNAC (Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya) in collaboration with the Tate Gallery in London. Through almost one hundred works by the English artist, including paintings, drawings, sketches and engravings, this exhibition allows us to see how through watercolor Turner manages to give the landscape a scientific approach, but at the same time with a great expressive precision that have made the English painter a true precursor of several of the movements that succeeded him.

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Avedon behind the scenes’ FotoNostrum

The FotoNostrum hall hosts the first exhibition dedicated to the famous American fashion photographer and portraitist Richard Avedon in Spain. The exhibition, made up of several photographs taken by the artist’s manager for more than 16 years, Gideon Lewis, shows the elaboration process behind some of Avedon’s most iconic images. The exhibition is completed with 13 original snapshots by Avedon himself from the private collection of the designer and curator of the exhibition Joanna Mastroianni. Without a doubt, the set becomes a true visual testimony of photo shoots for fashion magazines, as well as life in the studio.

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Film and Fashion. By Jean Paul Gaultier”, Caixa Forum.

The prestigious French designer Jean Paul Gaultier will co-curate an exhibition with more than 250 pieces that explores the relationships and influences between fashion and cinema, tracing the symbiosis that has historically existed between celluloid and fashion. Thus, the event delves into concepts such as the evolution of male-female bonds, female emancipation, modernity in clothing, gender transitions in cinema, eroticism and power roles. All through the works of great designers -such as Coco Chanel, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin and Sybilla-, about 70 iconic film looks, more than 90 audiovisual projections and original posters and photographs.

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” I look. The most intimate legacy” Fundació Joan Miró.

“Miró. The most intimate legacy” brings together some 180 objects, including some 80 works by Joan Miró that cover almost seven decades of artistic career, as well as preparatory drawings, unpublished documentation and family photographs. The exhibition is divided into five different areas, which present the formation and evolution of the family collections, and at the same time point out the links between the selected works and the vital, cultural and historical moments of the twentieth century that Joan Miró, Pilar Juncosa and Dolors Miró lived through.

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“Dones. Between Renoir and Sorolla”, Diocesan Museum

The exhibition depicts the social changes that took place among women in this period of history through the works of Auguste Renoir, Joaquín Sorolla, Santiago Rusiñol, Ramón Casas, Joaquín Torres-García and the sculptors Manolo Hugué, Josep Clará, Josep Llimona and Pablo Gargallo. In addition, the exhibition also includes a selection of pieces from the collection of the Diocesan Museum of Barcelona and recovers the memory of two extraordinary women who lived in the Barcelona of that time: Dorotea de Chopitea and Sister Eulàlia Anzizu.

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Josep Maria Subirachs began his sculptural practice under the guidance of Enric Monjo, a sculptor who, together with Frederic Mares, played a very active role in the reconstruction of post-war Barcelona. His training will continue to develop in the workshop of Enric Casanova, whose noucentista influence will deeply influence the young Subirachs, giving birth to his Mediterranean stage. After this first formative stage, the Barcelona-born artist, thanks to the scholarship granted to him in 1950 by the Maillol cercle, will travel to Paris, where he will learn first-hand about the artistic revolutions of the European avant-garde. This stay will be of capital importance in his career, not only because of the discovery of the latest artistic trends, but also because of the opportunity it gave him to make a name for himself as a sculptor.

Since then, his work will go through several phases that will fluctuate between figuration and abstraction, elaborating a solid personal language whose infinite references to his admired Julio Gonzalez, Brancussi, Henry Moore or Giacometti do not detract one iota of personality to a creative essence guided by his innovative spirit but above all by his vindication of art as a generator of life in the face of death and destruction.

Under these constant investigations to which he subjected his work, Subirachs was configuring a plastic universe in which beats a metaphorical and symbolic iconography where each sculpture treasures in itself its own cosmos. However, Subirachs will make certain resources and motifs of representation his workhorse, using them recurrently throughout his career. In this sense, the Venus in bidding encloses several of the concepts that were the backbone of her entire career.

Produced in a decade marked by the need to endow his work with more communicative elements, Subirachs opted for a new figuration whose true objective would lie, more than in its representation, in its significance. In this case, and as usually happens in his work, Subirachs resorts to the female figure in its mythological aspect. Through the body of the Goddess Venus, the inescapable imprint of an artist who, born under the sign of noucentisme, will embrace the classical Greco-Roman culture as an antidote to what he considers a civilization in decadence.

On the other hand, Subirachs will introduce through his sculptures a dialogue between dual concepts, such as space and time, light and shadows, man and woman or vertical and horizontal, reflecting the opposing or complementary dialectic that governs the world in which we live. In this sense, the marble sculpture that we present here contrasts verticality and horizontality, as well as the concept of space-time through a resource that will be fundamental in his work from then on: the so-called running profiles, from which the torso blurs until it fades away, forming large moldings. In fact, this type of resource also allows a double reading of opposite interpretations. On the one hand, it can be read as the raw material that progressively polishes and takes shape until it reaches the final perfection to which art aspires or, on the other hand, as the reflection of the destruction of that beauty and perfection caused by the decadence of culture.

Modern sculpture, based on its two pillars -material and body- approached the representation of the human figure under the cultural and historical conditions that marked the turn of the century. In this sense, the work of Joan Rebull represents the catalyzing element that precipitated the renewal of Catalan sculptural practice in the last century, giving shape to a sculpture whose conception aspires to define what is properly Mediterranean. For this purpose, and as Torres Garcia did, Rebull will turn to the most remote past of Mediterranean civilization, taking as a model the primitive and archaic art of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece. This return to what is recognized as the cradle of our culture responds to the impetuous will that spread through various territories of Europe to claim and recover from the political and cultural sphere the essence and uniqueness of an identity of its own. In this aspect, Rebull is in line with the Noucentistes postulates whose aesthetics will take as a reference the ideal of Classical Greece, based on the values of order, harmony and measure, whose serene and idealized beauty refers us to a mythical reality.

The archaic classicism that Rebull’s work adopts will become the perfect vehicle through which to represent those local traditions that would give shape to a sculptural type with which the people could feel identified. Under his vision of a Catalonia heir to Classical Antiquity, Rebull was inspired by the customs and types most deeply rooted in his native land to revive the splendor of Greek civilization, giving birth to a work whose cultural and political commitment is beyond doubt. In this aspect, the female figure will acquire a remarkable prominence that will be manifested both in her role as a Mediterranean goddess and in her own personification of the values of the land.

In this way, the artist from Tarragona gave life to a sculptural type that was solid and resounding in its volumes which, in its synthetic and austere expressiveness, contained a notable symbolic charge, especially latent in female figures, which, like the one we present today, symbolize the paradigm of the style that Rebull developed.

“La Pubilla” made in Carrara marble and of which there is another version located in the Municipal Palace of Reus, is a magnificent example of the balance achieved in his work where, in a combination of the material and ethereal, the earthly and spiritual, Rebull takes us to the immutable essence of our Mediterranean origins. In fact, and even more so in figures such as the Pubilla or the Pastoreta, the strong roots of the Catalan sculptor for his land are evident, as well as the political, aesthetic and artistic commitment that he acquired with the sign of a time deeply marked by the repression of the Franco regime. In this way, the traditional Pubilla, in Rebull’s hands, becomes a modern allegory that alludes to the greatest inheritance we can receive: that of our land. The hieratism of his face, serious and serene, and the sober sensuality with which he sculpts the anatomy, places the character in a timeless plane that takes us back to the times of the lost Arcadia.

The classical spirit latent in each of his works gave birth to his own concept of Mediterranean sculpture, in which the forms of the human body and especially the female figure, conquered in Rebull’s hands a timeless, eternal and classic space. In fact, as the critic Cirici Pellicer stated in a lucid observation, Rebull was capable of “transforming the particular, characteristic and ephemeral into typical and eternal”, establishing himself as a bridge of union between the culture before and after the Spanish Civil War, which places him as the most outstanding Catalan sculptor of the middle of the last century.

The discovery of the so-called Ötzy, the Iceman, a 5000-year-old body in the Italian Alps with an earring in his ear, shows us that earrings have been part of different civilizations since at least the Bronze Age.

The Bible is another place with different mentions of earrings both as “complements” (Hosea 2:13) and as a permanent symbol of slavery (Exodus 21:2-6).

The Roman Pliny the Elder (23-79) criticized the Romans for their exaggerated consumption and scorned, in his encyclopedia Naturalis Historia, Roman women for their newfound taste for pearl earrings.

Thus it said: “…hanging two or three from the ears…and calling them “crotalia” or “castanet earrings” …being glad to hear the sound when they clash with each other…and even announcing (through the streets) the arrival of a wealthy woman…”

In Ancient Egypt more than 6,000 years ago were simple earrings that pierced the ears, serving to attract looks and provoke the interest of others, and of course the pharaoh, had no earrings, and large pieces. Ramses II had thousands of earrings, so sophisticated and elaborately designed that they were obviously custom-made jewelry of great value.

We also find earrings in Asia, in the tombs of kings in the ancient city of Ur (Mesopotamia) where we have specimens from 5000 years ago.

Other ancient peoples, besides the Babylonians, Persians, Indians, Hebrews, Arabs, also used them as a talisman and protection.

Today, earrings are still part of women’s attire. Their designs, shapes and materials create fashion trends, and often form sets with necklaces, bracelets and rings. Being close to the face, it is possibly the most flattering accessory for women.

Therefore, the choice of the most appropriate earring for each moment is one of the most important choices in women’s styling. Whether as an accessory purchase or as a gift, the earring is and will be an essential element with which a woman will express her beauty looking for that balance in shape, size and color that only a good earring can provide.

Since the Renaissance with the Medici in Florence and the Sforza family in Milan, Italy has been the cradle of the great artists in Europe.

Great creators have been setting international trends to this day.

Italian goldsmithing is one of the wonders of Made in Italy.

Perfect fusion of tradition and modernity, it synthesizes the love of beauty with artisan experience and the ability to preserve ancient knowledge that has made Italy one of the world leaders in the production of jewelery and goldsmiths.

In Italy there is a flourishing luxury market, of international fame, represented by the so-called distretti (literally district, referring to important production areas) for gold, especially that of Valenza ., which is one of the best known and most important in the international jewelery sector. The district de Valenza includes eight neighboring municipalities where high-end jewelery and goldsmiths are produced and sold.

The city, which will be included among the places of particular interest in the Milan Expo, opened its Gioiello Museum (Museo de la Joya) in 2015.

The small town in Piedmont is the one with the highest density of goldsmiths in Italy, the largest number of artisan companies in goldsmiths and jewelers, and combines the solid tradition of high craftsmanship with a great capacity for technical, stylistic and material innovation. The high level of design, a lively production network and an internationally renowned fair, as well as its training centers and a strong goldsmith tradition eradicated in the territory, make Valenza the cradle of jewelery in Italy and an international benchmark.

Goldsmith crafts are one of the most widespread professions in Italy, with deep local roots and regional specializations, where companies are often family-owned and make custom-made jewelry for their clients. This typically Italian artistic vocation is illustrated by numerous localities and goldsmith districts.

Sophistication, craftsmanship, independent spirit, love for detail and, above all, for the high sense of delicious femininity and love that a jewel must translate: these are the keys to becoming one of the greats. Vendorafa has managed to combine all these criteria in its pieces.

Vendorafa Lombardi jewelery pieces they are born in essential ways: organic patterns in continuous harmony with intuition and experience, research and creativity. The desire to explore new planning routes and new manufacturing strategies generates harmonious solutions and original tactile effects.

Vendorafa creations are conceived, created, designed and made with Italian hands, heart and soul.

The work, made exclusively by hand, enhances the material value of gold, its light and its aesthetic warmth.

More than sixty years of jewelry made in Italy thanks to the passion of expert goldsmiths. Since 1951, Vendorafa has been creating and producing collections that are known and recognized as a sign of Made in Italy style and excellence.

In the 1920s and 1930s, what would be the second migratory wave of Spanish artists to Paris took place, among whom figures of the stature of Hernando Viñes, Gomez de la Serna, Oscar Domínguez or Francisco Bores stand out, who formed the so-called Spanish School of Paris . Far from being an artistically homogeneous group, this school is the result of a sum of personalities and artistic trajectories whose common denominator, in addition to their temporal and geographical confluence, is found in the research, experimentation and assimilation of the multiple and novel artistic contexts that the historical avant-gardes offered them.

An example of this is the canvas made in 1951 by Francisco Bores, who after his departure for Paris in the year fully integrated into the Parisian artistic environment where he lived practically all his life. In this case, the still life in the tender belongs to an extremely fertile creative period in its production, perfectly defined in the words of the artist himself. “My constant search for space led me, in 1950, to a new mutation: it is what critics called “the white way”. I continued to aspire to greater luminosity, disembodiing at the same time more and more figures. An attempt, in a certain way, to approach what abstract artists aspired to through purely figurative means. My painting, which was once dark, is today clear. The composition, which was very tight, I want now free and loose”.

The convulsion that the Civil War represented for Spain marked the beginning of a new migratory stage that, due to its consequences and after the Republican defeat, especially affected the group of plastic artists who supported the losing side. This stage, which began at the end of 1939, is already fully considered as an exile for artists who, like Antoni Clavé, arrived in Paris fleeing the repression of fascism that had triumphed in Spain.

Among the diversity of stages through which the work of the Catalan artist that concerns us here passes, he comes to show us the unmistakable stamp that they engraved on him, the novelties of the avant-garde that he discovered in Paris, making him one of the main characters of the second generation of artists who, under the protective wing of Picasso, formed the School of Paris. The figuration that Clavé practices in these years, moves away, as we see in this canvas, from any conventionalism or academicism thanks in large part to the influence that the work of Picasso will exert on him, translated here into an absolute compositional and formal freedom. In fact, through a figuration of expressionist features and a chromaticism full of Fauves intonations of deep intensity and great material consistency, Clavé transmits the fragile and vulnerable psychology of the figure of the crazy woman whose expressiveness and virulence directly challenges the viewer.

The pharaohs act as intermediaries between the gods and the people, the pharaoh as the living incarnation of the god Horus. An example of this is seen in the scene of the following relief where Pharaoh Ptolemy presents himself as ruler of the Two Lands and offers a libation to Osiris and Isis. His divine status before the people made them unite under the command of the ruler to erect the great monuments of the nation, the pyramids, as tombs of the pharaohs, temples and religious centers.

The key question for an Egyptian was: What do I have to do to continue living when I am no longer in this world? There were multiple answers to this question. Unifying it in some way is summed up in that there has to be a connection between the current life and the future, that is, it was necessary to leave a positive mark in this world to continue in the next. On the one hand, the works that he had done would be judged, the deceased would have to have led a life aimed at good. On the other hand, on the material plane, he would have to leave his name and his legacy as witnesses of his passage, with the promotion of a chapel or work demonstrating his piety. If the name of the person lasted, his life would continue, hence it is inscribed with such insistence on grave goods and monuments.

Another aspect was to have the body preserved, which led to the art of embalming. A mummy like the following piece is an extraordinary example of medical knowledge and anatomy of more than three thousand five hundred years. The preservation of the organs in canopic jars, the custody of the body inside a sarcophagus or covering the deceased with bandages, perfumes and amulets respond to the same objective, to procure life for them. All these elements were an aid to survival on the journey that was beginning. For example, the ushabtis used to accompany the trousseau with which the person was buried, these small figures would be their assistants. These would do the tasks entrusted by Osiris in their lands, such as tilling them (that is why they usually go with a hoe).

The paintings that covered the walls of their dwellings for posterity represented them in the future daily life, assuming that it would occur. The faith that the same people demonstrated for more than three millennia has left as an echo works as extraordinary as these pieces that still continue to fulfill the same function for which they were created, to keep alive the memory of those people, the pharaoh Ptolemy or the anonymous egyptian princess.

The works that, like “Trailer D”, have become the flagship of his artistic identity are the fruit of this profound reflection: the so-called meta-paintings . The origin of this new procedure, which came to light for the first time in 1998, curiously arises from a kind of error, when chance caused various digital files that he collected and combined following a simple nominal search system on the Internet to mix with each other, giving as a result, a work that the artist preferred not to modify (Remix, 1995). This “defective” image served to start a new method where the multiple and heterogeneous images that he compiled were subjected to digital manipulation until they reached their absolute distortion. Transformed beyond recognition and after being scanned and printed on transparency or acetate, they are projected on the canvas to later pour and superimpose the various layers of epoxy resin colored with pigments . This liquid resin that spreads on the white canvas transforms during the curing process until it solidifies, maintaining a brilliant appearance where the light seems to come from inside the painting, making its way through its multiple translucent layers. The result of this unusual procedure materializes in a work whose appearance is radically different from that of its origin, it explores visual rosettes of the surface and the material in synthetic and gelatinous textures of a psychedelic appearance that often resemble a microscopic examination in some way. of life or matter as yet unknown.

In this sense, the result of “spilling” the resin on the canvas through a game between chance and the artist’s self-control establishes a parallelism with the action painting of the expressionist painters and especially Jackson Pollock. However, Zimmerman’s conceptual concern is closer to On Kawara’s reflections on the ambiguity between painting’s desire to express what it really represents and its own acceptance of the limitations of this practice. Therefore, under these organic and amorphous forms that seem to have been formed on the canvas following an apparently random procedure, but perfectly studied, there is a lucid reflection around the contemporary fascination for a fragmentary and subjective multiple reality as elusive as our own sensations and perceptions in the face of the visual flashes that are the works of Zimmerman. This new way of conceiving painting also implies an aspect as relevant as the way we see it, questioning and causing uncertainty between the object and its representation . In other words, and as Magritte already expressed in his iconic work between what we think we see and what is really there.

Zimmerman manages to go beyond the coldness of technological and digital media with a work that captivates us, thanks to its powerful aesthetic presence and evocative character, where the depth and density of its materials and its visceral effects of light and color are capable of overwhelming anyone. he watches her

The pair of bronzes up for bid exemplifies this new sculptural paradigm that the artist formulated in the early 1960s after achieving notable success with his first public work for the Carrara Chamber of Commerce. Thanks to this, he was able to move to Paris, a city in which, in addition to interacting with figures of the stature of Picasso, Giacometti or Le Corbusier, he dedicated himself fully and exclusively to sculpture. It was also then when, after receiving several commissions, the artist decided to produce his works not only as large-scale single pieces, but also as serial copies, whose purpose, just as painters did with the graphic arts, was to extend and democratize artistic practice. .

Together with the concept of multiple that defines them, “Menina II” and “Torero” are also the result of an interactive aesthetic conception under which the sculpture is designed to be touched, experienced and manipulated by a spectator who, leaving the role of a mere passive observer, now becomes an involved and complicit part of the artistic creation. Berrocal builds the totality of both sculptors. With a meticulousness and precision typical of master watchmakers, Berrocal interweaves each one of the pieces with an architectural, mechanical and mathematical articulation that, with great rational sense, represents a compositional gear at the service of a plastic with large doses of industrial design but also of an artistic tradition that drinks from great masters of our history such as Goya Picasso or Dalí.

In the case of “Menina II”, and in a clear allusion to Velázquez, Berrocal carries out a complex creative exercise that swings between tradition and renewal, reformulating through the symbiosis of the arts, sciences and technology not only the sculptural practice, but also the history of art itself. Likewise, as a result of this sculpture, the tribute album to Velázquez was born, in which Berrocal asked Rafael Alberti to write an introduction called ‘Casi malagueñas de La Menina II’.

In “Torero” Berrocal delves into the most common and significant concepts of his work that were central themes . In fact, one of the copies of this multiple was part of the exhibition held in 2010 “Berrocal: bullfighters and warriors” organized by the Unicaja foundation. Together with a dozen monumental sculptures, this small work made up of 18 brass pieces reflects his obsession with the idea of the fragment as an evocation of the whole, represented in the form of a male torso which is also, in this case, a tribute to which was another of his great passions: bullfighting.

As we can see, the thematic repertoire whose absolutely classical roots escape any geometric or abstract excess, encloses an anthropomorphic conception of Hellenic and baroque inspiration where each element separately is just a geometric shape that only acquires a figurative meaning when joined to the rest of the fragments. that make it up.