TERESA SESÉ
Barcelona
At the legendary and turbulent Pamplona Encounters, which in the days leading up to the San Fermín festivities in 1972 filled the streets of the Navarrese capital with poetry, music, art and performance, the Equipo Crónica (Manuel Valdés and Rafael Solbes) placed one hundred figurines wearing dark glasses among the audience at the Labrit Fronton, as if they were undercover police officers or Francoist commissioners. This multiple and watchful presence, which they titled Espectador de espectadores, provoked the audience's fury, dividing them between those who chose to knock the figures down and those who took them home. One of the survivors (others are now part of major museum collections, such as that of the Reina Sofía) is currently seated in the modernist mansion of the Círculo Ecuestre. With its back to the large window overlooking Diagonal Avenue, it welcomes visitors to the space occupied by the Madrid gallery Guillermo de Osma at the seventh edition of the By Invitation art fair.
The initiative was launched in 2020 «as a breath of fresh air, bringing art closer to Barcelona society after so many months spent indoors because of the pandemic», recalled its founder, Enrique Lacalle, yesterday, shortly before the rooms filled with collectors from Barcelona and further afield. They are drawn not only by the unique opportunity to stroll through and view art in a domestic setting, far removed from the coldness of an exhibition centre, but also by the coherence and quality of proposals that have continued to grow year after year. «It's the only art fair in the world my father likes, although this year he hasn't been able to come», admitted Leonor de Osma, who has designed a museum-worthy space featuring works by Torres-García —a 1916 landscape of Terrassa and a toy—, Óscar Domínguez, Aurèlia Muñoz (who currently has a retrospective at MACBA), Tàpies... «For us, it's not just about selling; coming here is also a great opportunity to maintain contact with the Barcelona public», she explains.
Beyond art, By Invitation, which remains open until Sunday, is also an opportunity to explore one of the city's most exclusive buildings, normally reserved for members but opening its doors to everyone during the fair. All visitors need to do is go to the exhibition's website or the organisation's social media accounts and download the invitation bearing the title of this year's edition, Tramas abiertas. Curated by Mariella Franzoni, the fair's artistic director, it brings together 24 exhibition projects.
«The fair has been gaining character, professionalism, an audience and a more discerning public», comments the gallerist, who points out the most distinctive piece in a stand full of remarkable works: a wooden sculpture by an early Moisés Villèlia (1954), one of the few to have survived and, moreover, bearing his signature. It is priced at €38,000 and is in excellent company alongside a view of the Ramblas by Torres-García, dating from 1918 (€80,000), an Aurèlia Muñoz and a Magda Bolumar. Almost 50% of the participating artists are women. Sales? «Yes, of course there are sales», replies Doménech, «here or later at the gallery», with clients including both Barcelona residents and expats.
But the rooms of the Círculo Ecuestre are not entirely serene. There are also winds of revolt blowing here. Barcelona-born artist Agnès Essonti Luque, of Cameroonian origin (Bombon Projects), has created a series of flags using prints made in the Netherlands for sale in Africa. In collaboration with the Top Manta collective, she incorporates proverbs in Pidgin, a kind of Cameroonian lingua franca: «The fool's mistake is what the clever man eats» or «The monkey may not be beautiful, but its mother loves it all the same».
The proposals range from the great figures of the avant-garde to the most fiercely contemporary.
At ADN, Eugénio Merino literally tears the American Constitution to pieces and wraps a Palestinian passport in one of those thermal blankets used in emergencies. At Ethall, Idoia Leache smashes traffic signs, while Andrea Mastrovito, the artist behind the Lamb of God at the Sagrada Família, has transformed the library of the elegant Oriental Room (Lab36 + Senda) into barricades, behind which revolutionaries hide, their faces covered with scarves, with books serving as shields against barbarity. Most of the books have a connection with the Spanish Civil War, from André Malraux to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, as well as Rodoreda's The Time of the Doves and Joan Sales's Uncertain Glory. And, without intending to, the housing crisis finds its way into the Beta gallery, where visitors can see how Laia Garcia Adell's work has moved away from large formats after losing her home-studio, reinventing itself through small watercolours.