- The Girona museum presents the first monographic exhibition dedicated to the artist with almost all of his preserved work, most of which comes from family collections and is practically unpublished.
- Francisca Rius i Sanuy (Barcelona, 1891-1967), best known for her Intimate Diary of the Civil War, excelled in ornamental design and the art of stylization in the 1920s-1930s.
The Girona Art Museum will open the exhibition “Francisca Rius i Sanuy (1891-1967). Design and life” on Saturday, November 29, at 12 noon, the first monographic exhibition dedicated to this Catalan artist who was condemned to oblivion by the social and political context of the 20th century. Curated by her grandson, Domènec Ribot, the exhibition will be open until April 6, 2026 and will feature previously unpublished works, most of which come from the family collections.
The idea for the exhibition was born in the context of the exhibition that the Museu d’Art de Girona dedicated, in 2022, to the artists who had appeared in the pages of the magazine Feminal. The exhibition at that time, with the title Feresa de Silenci and under the curatorship of Elina Norandi, brought to light artists and works that were practically unknown. At that time, the Museu d’Art de Girona, faithful to one of its exhibition lines dedicated to recovering and highlighting women artists of all time, committed to producing an exhibition, and catalogue, dedicated to Francisca Rius i Sanuy.
Francisca Rius, from her years of training at the Escola de la Llotja, pointed out ways to become a brilliant designer, with drawings and designs inspired by fauna and flora of great beauty and uniqueness. Illustrations, drawings, graphic designs and embroidery patterns that can be seen in the exhibition, carefully preserved for decades by the family and almost never shown to the public, allow us to rediscover a creator who excelled in ornamental design. Her drawings, with a language located between modernism and art-deco, are characterized by the delicacy of the forms, color and decorative strength. Her work today, although scarce, is an excellent testimony of the so-called art of stylization, and responded to the need to offer artistic works of simplified forms to be applied to the demands of different industries.
A truncated trajectory
Francisca Rius i Sanuy (Barcelona, 1891-1967) trained at the Escola de la Llotja between 1907 and 1914, where she won several prizes and the silver medal from the Provincial Academy of Fine Arts. That same year, the magazine Feminal dedicated a report to her, defining her as an “artist of merit” and “master in the highly original, as well as difficult, art of stylization”.
Despite promising beginnings, her career was interrupted by family responsibilities and, later, by the consequences of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship, which definitively distanced her from teaching and professional artistic practice.
Little of Rius’s work is preserved in public collections. Embroidery patterns are preserved in the Barcelona Design Museum (DHub), and in the National Archive of Catalonia, where the original manuscript of his Intimate Diary is kept, as well as other relevant documentation. The interest of the exhibition also lies in increasing the artist’s public funds.
The Intimate Diary : A Female Voice in Times of War
Between 1938 and 1939, while her eldest son was mobilized at the front, Francisca Rius wrote a diary that describes the day-to-day life of the Barcelona rearguard with an intimate and lucid look. Published in 2009 by Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, the Diari íntim is a document of great value for understanding daily life and the female gaze during the Civil War. Original fragments of the manuscript can be seen at the exhibition.
Family curation and parallel activities
Curated by Domènec Ribot, grandson of the artist, “Francisca Rius i Sanuy. Design and life” is part of the commitment of the Girona Art Museum to recover and make visible forgotten women artists, continuing the project initiated with the exhibition “Feresa de silenci. Les artistes a la revista Feminal , 1907-1917″, in 2022.
Among the parallel activities, the guided tour on December 13, given by the curator of the exhibition and coinciding with the artist’s birthday, as well as several workshops for adults, stands out. An exhibition catalogue will also be published, with texts by Elina Norandi, Pilar Vélez, and Jaume, Eulàlia and Domènec Ribot, grandchildren of Francisca Rius; and a reading point has been organized at the Carles Rahola Library in Girona with books related to Francisca Rius, her historical context and the female presence in the arts.
The exhibition highlights the talent and determination of a woman who, despite the family, social and political difficulties of her time, maintained a constant artistic and pedagogical vocation, a symbol of so many silenced female trajectories.
