- The nearly 600 works that make up the newspaper’s founding collection can now be consulted through the website of the Girona Art Museum, which has preserved the collection since 2011.
- The Avui art collection has become a very relevant artistic representation of Catalan art from the last quarter of the 20th century.
Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the newspaper Avui and with the inauguration of the commemorative exhibition “AVUI 50+. Since 1976, news, language and country” at the Palau Robert in Barcelona on February 23, the Girona Art Museum presents the online collection of the Rotary Art Fund, preserved in the Girona museum since 2011.
From 23 February, more than 550 works will be available for consultation with descriptions prepared by Montse Frisach, a journalist and critic specializing in visual arts. The online release of the collection will allow visitors to discover a collection of great historical and artistic value with pieces by artists such as Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies, Colita, Esther Boix, Joan Ponç, Antoni Clavé, Emília Xargay, Francesc Torres Monsó, Josep Guinovart, Montserrat Gudiol and Elena Paredes, among many others.
The origin of the fund
On April 23, 1976, the first issue of the newspaper Avui was published, the first Catalan-language newspaper after the Franco dictatorship. The newspaper was born under the pressure of a large part of Catalan society and received broad support, including that of artists. Practically all the artists of the time responded to a call to donate a work to help consolidate the company. In 1994, a new push was given to the foundational fund, adding new contributions and works by new generations of artists. This was the origin of the Art Fund of the newspaper Avui : a collection of more than 600 pieces of great historical and artistic value, very chronologically coherent and representative from an artistic point of view.
In 1983, by virtue of an agreement between the publisher and the Generalitat of Catalonia, the Department of Culture received the art collection on deposit in order to disseminate it with a series of traveling exhibitions in various Catalan cities, and, since 1991, it has been installed in the Monastery of Vilabertran, where it is still preserved in the warehouses today.
In 2010, after the bankruptcy of the company Premsa Catalana SA, publisher of the newspaper, the Generalitat de Catalunya reached an agreement to acquire the entire art collection and prevent its dispersion and possible export outside Catalonia. The collection was divided into two blocks: the 24 original covers were deposited at the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, while the main bulk of the works were linked to the Museu d’Art de Girona, with the aim of strengthening its contemporary art collection.
Exhibitions and access to the collection
Since 2019, the Girona Art Museum has been working to give new visibility to this valuable collection, coinciding with the growing interest in Catalan art from the second half of the 20th century.
In 2019, the temporary exhibition “70’s-90’s. From a certain abstraction to conceptual art” was inaugurated, curated by art critic Pilar Parcerisas, which outlined the itinerary of the arts in Catalonia from the 1970s to the 1990s, with a selection of 60 works by the most representative artists of the period. Four years later, in 2023, two new exhibitions were inaugurated under the name “Blasts of an instant. The contribution of artists to the Art Collection of the newspaper Avui ”, in this case curated by Elina Norandi, historian and feminist art critic. Both exhibitions brought to light the names of Catalan artists who were also linked to the support of the newspaper at both times, in 1975 with the founding of the newspaper and in 1990 with a second impulse to grow the collection.
These samples are now joined by the online collection , which can be consulted from February 23 on the Art Museum’s website: https://museuart.cat/les-colleccions/fons-diari-avui/
The digital platform allows you to explore the works with detailed files that include images of the piece, descriptions prepared by journalist and art critic Montse Frisach, technical information about each work and data about the artists. Users will be able to browse the collection using different search criteria.
This initiative is part of the Girona Art Museum’s commitment to the dissemination and accessibility of artistic heritage, making it easier for researchers, students and the general public to learn about and study this significant collection of contemporary Catalan art from anywhere.