Barcelona, Spain.- The CaixaForum is pleased to present “Impressionist Masters from the Clark Collection” on view at the museum through February 12th 2012. In April 1874 the first exhibition was held in the studio of the photogra-pher Nadar, in the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, of a group of painters who had been rejected in the Official Salon: the Impressionists. European art entered into a new stage, marked by a series of very rapid changes that, in just a few years, dispensed with appearance, natural colours, the subject and perspective: the elements that, since the Renaissance, had characterised pictorial representation. When Sterling Clark moved to Paris in 1910, some of the leading artists of this pictorial revolution were still alive. In 1916 Clark bought the painting Girl crocheting by Auguste Renoir, attracted by the colour and sensuality of the feminine image. It was the culminant point of a passion that led him to bring together an extraordinary collection of works of French painting that crossed over from the 19th to the 20th century.
Clark did not share the iconoclastic spirit so common in many of the manifestations of contemporary art. Quite the contrary, he sought continuity between the creations of the past and the present. The works he acquired, mainly from the early stage of Impressionism, existed alongside the old masters as well as the immediately previous painting styles, free of ruptures. This exhibition presents the masterpieces of the French painting collection of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. To begin with, it reconstructs the path that led to Impressionism, when a group of painters – Camille Corot, Jean-François Millet, Constant Troyon and Théodore Rousseau — decided to move to the wood of Barbizon, close to Fontainebleau, in order to be able to paint in the open air. Traditionally, the landscape had been the backcloth of mythological or religious scenes. The artists from the Barbizon school moved it into the foreground and established an intimate relationship, as if they wanted to merge it with nature. The Impressionists quickly followed their steps. The early compositions by Claude Monet, Gustave Caillebotte or Alfred Sisley aspire to retain the impression of a moment during the day, magnificently and sumptuously, through the effects of light and colour. Around 1880 Impressionism experienced a moment of plenitude with the work of Monet that lasted until the final consequences of the search for beauty. The painting is the result of the superimposition of individual brushstrokes that create the effect of an explosion of light, the point of flight disappears and the landscape becomes the object of a transcendental meditation.
The impressionists also renewed interior and still life painting: they chose simple subject matters linked to daily life in the country or city and portrayed them as no-one else had done until then: often with natural light, with a vibrant brushstroke that recreates the effect of the light on the surface of things. Pierre-Auguste Renoir was Sterling Clark’s great passion, and bought thirty-nine paintings by this artist –nudes, scenes of modern life, portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and still lives– with special emphasis on the early stage of his production, between 1874 and 1880, the period most linked to Impressionism. All this research coexisted alongside the art of academic painters who placed the conventional subjects on the canvas: historic, religious and mythological works and portraits of important figures. For Sterling Clark any art could be good in its category. Thus, in his collection, the masterpieces by Impressionist painters share space with works by the best painters trained in the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. In the final part of the “Impressionists. French masters from the Clark Collection” exhibition, stress is made of the contribution of the Post-impressionists: from Honoré Daumier to Henry Toulouse-Lautrec, from Edgar Degas to Pierre Bonnard and Paul Gauguin. Bright and luminous colours, which do not always coincide with real colours and a conception of two-dimensional space, regardless of the laws of perspective. Sterling Clark turned his personal passion into a collective heritage. In 1955 Clark created his own museum in Williamstown, in the state of Massachusetts and is today a reference centre for lovers of painting, with exhibition rooms and a research and higher education centre.
One of Spain’s top tourist attractions, the CaixaForum has a fascinating history. Inaugurated in February 2002, CaixaForum is the Barcelona headquarters of “La Caixa” Foundation, a social and cultural foundation created by “La Caixa” savings bank. The “La Caixa” Foundation is a non-profit institution, created at the beginning of the 1980s to supervise the bank’s charitable works (which had been part of their philosophy since being established at the start of the twentieth century). The foundation is active in a wide range of cultural areas, including providing public libraries, organizing music festivals, the provision of social services and medical research. However, it is for its museums that it is best known. As well as 2 large science museums (in Barcelona and Madrid), the foundation has art museums and exhibition spaces in Madrid, Mallorca, Palma, Lleida, Tarragona and Barcelona, under the “CaixaForum” banner. The Foundation started collecting contemporary art in 1985 and since then it has accumulated over 950 works. CaixaForum Barcelona is based in a former textile factory in Barcelona that serves both as the foundation’s headquarters and also as the main art exhibition space. Commissioned by the industrialist Casimir Casaramona i Puigcercós as a textile factory, this art-nouveau style building was designed by the famous Barcelona architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch and opened in 1911. A triumph of modern, enlightened working conditions and stunning architecture, the building immediately became a design icon for the city, winning local design awards and with many locals refusing to believe that behind the fabulous exterior, it hid a mundane textile factory. The bare brickwork is topped by Catalan vaults resting on cast-iron columns and enclosing light-filled, spacious workshops. By necessity, a long and low building, the architect broke its silhouette with battlements and two slender towers. Unfortunately, it only survived as a factory for a few years before becoming first a warehouse and then stables and garages for the National Police Force. “La Caixa” acquired the building in 1963, and in 1992 it was decided to return this building to the people of Barcelona, and the country as a whole, while giving it a new function with social, cultural and educational aims, it thus became the CaixaForum.
Local and international architects, including the RIBA gold medal winning Japanese architect, Arata Isozaki, who designed the main entrance (a sculpted structure in the form of metal trees covered by panes of glass) and visitors’ reception area in the Centre, contributed to the refurbishment and extension work. The building now provides 3,600 m2 of exhibition space (in 5 exhibition galleries), a 350-seat auditorium, a kids’ art workshop, café-restaurant and gallery shop. It has become one of Barcelona’s most dynamic, active and lively cultural centers. From the entrance, escalators and the lift run from Isozaki’s sculpture down to the open-air English courtyard below, which gives onto the foyer. This part of the building also houses the “Secret garden”, a minimalist, intimate, closed-off area that allows the visitor to clear their mind before encountering more of the artworks. Visit the museum’s website at … http://obrasocial.lacaixa.es/nuestroscentros/caixaforumbarcelona/caixaforumbarcelona_es.html