Terramare
June 27 – November 7, 2010
To mark the tenth anniversary of the Collection Lambert, the City of Avignon decided to organize a major exhibition devoted to the rich and many-facetted art of Miquel Barceló, an artist who divides his time between Paris, Majorca (where he was born) and the Dogon villages of Mali. This exhibition, curated by the Collection Lambert en Avignon, will be presented in three historic venues representing the city’s extraordinarily rich cultural heritage.
The presence of Miquel Barceló echoes the memorable visit to the Popes of Avignon made by the Kings of Majorca in the fourteenth century, as well as the event organized by Pablo Picasso in 1970 four years befor he died: one of the last major exhibitions of his paintings, held in the chapel of the Papal Palace.
In the same vein, the Papal Palace will present recent and unseen works by Barceló, while the Collection Lambert will present works made over the past decade. The Petit Palais Museum, eager to create a dialogue between historic art and contemporary art, is also taking part in the event and will present gothic art from Majorca which has not left Spain since the Middle Ages.
The Collection Lambert will present a series of works made in the noughties, most of which have never been shown before: mainly paintings, but also some large drawings and several sculptures. A relationship with medieval history and imaginary geography (the development of the Mediterranean world towards Africa and the East) will be very much in evidence, with series of paintings of maps and far-off landscapes, bestiaries of fabulous creatures, symbolic still lives of exotic fruit (pomegranates, marrows with epicurian titles – “De Natura Rerum”), African faces whitened with bleach, shorelines dotted with strange shells washed up by the tide, and unknown, storm-drenched seas teeming with fish.
Photo : Miquel Barceló / © Adagp, Paris