In our desire to collaborate with the organisations present on Montjuïc and to establish synergies with the Sónar festival, the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya will be one of the venues for the activities of Sónar de Dia (Sónar by Day), within the Sónar+D programme, a lab and meeting point showing in Barcelona from 13 to 15 June the future of creativity and technology.

The first collaboration between the Museu Nacional and Barcelona’s International Festival of Advanced Music and New Media Art will be the installation of a monumental digital sculpture 12 metres tall and 48m2. For four days, from 13 to 16 June, this work will be hung from the ceiling of the Oval Hall, which will be darkened for the occasion.

This monumentally sized audiovisual project bears the title of Matter and is the work of the London-based Italian artist Quayola.

Matter explores the geometry and volumes of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Thinker and is the first in a series of works intended to investigate the three-dimensionality of objects.

In a dialogue with Quayola’s work, the Museu Nacional will be exhibiting a bronze from its collection.

In the words of Pepe Serra, Director of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, ‘this collaboration between the Museu Nacional and Sónar forms part of the process of implementing the museum project. The relation with other disciplines will help to generate new discourses and provoke dialogues with the collections, which will lead to renewed readings. The proximity to Sónar will help to shape a more attractive and powerful area on Montjuïc’.

Quayola's Matter

The digital sculpture is based on the artist’s interest in works of art requiring great technical skill, as in the case of Rodin’s masterpiece.

This work looks into the processes by which matter is transformed, from the block of stone to the final work, in a never-ending process the artist explores and questions.

Quayola starts with a series of photographs of the original work taken by himself. He then works with a graphic computer model to reconstruct and reinterpret the volumes. The work, projected onto an outsize screen, has a sound design by Matthias Kispert.

Prior to its presentation at the Museu Nacional in Barcelona, this work has been on show in Moscow, Singapore, Beijing, Paris, Milan and New York.

Auguste’s Rodin The Age of Bronze

In a dialogue with Quayola’s work, the Museu Nacional will be exhibiting a bronze from its collection, Auguste Rodin’s The Age of Bronze, in the Oval Hall. This emblematic work of modern sculpture was purchased by the museum during the artist’s lifetime and has been in its collection since 1907.

The Age of Bronze was Rodin’s first life-size sculpture, made after a trip to Italy in 1875 when he discovered the great works of the Renaissance and especially those by Michelangelo. From that moment on, Rodin abandoned decorative sculpture, broke with the dominant academicism of the time and started on the path that would lead him to become the forerunner of modern sculpture. Rodin had a decisive influence on the sculptors of his day, amongst them the Catalan Modernistes, who were inspired by the more symbolist aspects of his production.

The installation can be seen from 13 June until Sunday 16 and admission will be free. On 13, 14 and 15 June it will be open to visitors until 10 pm. What’s more, anyone with a Sónar day ticket or festival season pass can benefit from a two-for-one discount in the price of the general admission to the museum.

In 1922 Catalan society united to achieve an objective: the acquisition of Marià Fortuny’s painting The Spanish Wedding from a private French collector. By way of individual financial donations and public subscription, the money required for its purchase was raised. Since then, the work has been on display for our contemplation in the Museu Nacional.

Now, almost a century later, we have the opportunity to ensure that another work by Fortuny can be admired by all.


* You can consult the benefits of each membership at www.amicsdelmnac.org or at the information desk