On 23 April 1976, the first issue of the newspaper Avui was published, the first daily in Catalan after the Franco dictatorship. The newspaper was born out of the drive of a large part of Catalan society and received widespread support, including from the artistic community. Practically all the artists of the time responded to a call to donate a work in order to help consolidate the project. This was the origin of the Avui art collection: a group of around 600 works of great historical and artistic value, highly coherent chronologically and representative from an artistic point of view.

In 2011, following the bankruptcy of Premsa Catalana S.A., the newspaper’s publisher, the Generalitat de Catalunya acquired the collection. It was divided into two groups: the 24 original front pages were deposited at the Museu d’Història de Catalunya, while the main body of works is held at the Museu d’Art de Girona, with the aim of strengthening its contemporary art collection.