Galeries Dalmau

Jean Metzinger, 1910–11, Deux Nus (Two Nudes, Two Women), oil on canvas, 92 × 66 cm, Gothenburg Museum of Art, Sweden. Exhibited at the first Cubist manifestation, Room 41 of the 1911 Salon des Indépendants, Paris. Exposició d'Art Cubista, Galeries Dalmau, Barcelona, 1912
Francis Picabia, c. 1921-22, Optophone I, encre, aquarelle et mine de plomb sur papier, 72 x 60 cm. Reproduced in Galeries Dalmau, Picabia, exhibition catalogue, Barcelona, November 18 - December 8, 1922

Galeries Dalmau was an art gallery in Barcelona, Spain, from 1906 to 1930 (also known as Sala Dalmau, Les Galeries Dalmau, Galería Dalmau, and Galeries J. Dalmau). The gallery was founded and managed by the Symbolist painter and restorer Josep Dalmau i Rafel [ca]. The aim was to promote, import and export avant-garde artistic talent. Dalmau is credited for having launched avant-garde art in Spain.[1][2]

In 1912, Galeries Dalmau presented the first declared group exhibition of Cubism worldwide,[1][3] with a controversial showing by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin and Marcel Duchamp. The gallery featured pioneering exhibitions which included Fauvism, Orphism, De Stijl, and abstract art with Henri Matisse, Francis Picabia, and Pablo Picasso, in both collective and solo exhibitions. Dalmau published the Dadaist review 391 created by Picabia,[4][5] and gave support to Troços by Josep Maria Junoy i Muns [ca].[6][7][8]

Dalmau was the first gallery in Spain to exhibit works by Juan Gris, the first to host solo exhibitions of works by Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí and Angel Planells. It was also the first gallery to exhibit Vibrationism.[9]

The gallery presented native pre-avant-garde artists, tendencies and manifestations new to the Catalan art scene, while also exporting Catalan art abroad, through exhibition-exchange projects, such as promoting the first exhibition by Joan Miró in Paris (1921). Aware of the difficulty and marginality of the innovative art sectors, their cultural diffusion, and promotion criterion beyond any stylistic formula, Dalmau made these experiences the center of the gallery's programming. Dalmau is credited for having introduced avant-garde art to the Iberian Peninsula. Due to Dalmau's activities and exhibitions at the gallery, Barcelona became an important international center for innovative and experimental ideas and methods.[10]

  1. ^ a b Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten, A Cubism Reader, Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914, University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 293–295
  2. ^ Carol A. Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898-1936, University of Chicago Press, 2001, p. 76, ISBN 0226330389
  3. ^ Commemoració del centenari del cubisme a Barcelona. 1912-2012, Associació Catalana de Crítics d'Art – ACCA
  4. ^ Francis Picabia, 391, several issues available online
  5. ^ Peter Brooker; Sascha Bru; Andrew Thacker; Christian Weikop (19 May 2013). The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Europe 1880 - 1940. Oxford University Press. p. 398. ISBN 978-0-19-965958-6. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
  6. ^ Troços, digitalization available in the ARCA Portal (archive of antique Catalan magazines)
  7. ^ Archive of Troços magazine
  8. ^ Josep Maria Junoy, Arte & Artistas (Primera serie), Barcelona, Llibreria de L'Avenç, 1912
  9. ^ M. Lluïsa Faxedas Brujats, "Barradas' Vibrationism and its Catalan Context", RIHA Journal 0135, 15 July 2016
  10. ^ Sebastià Gasch, El arte de vanguardia en Barcelona (Avant-Garde Art in Barcelona), Destino. Año 1962, No. 1287-1290 (Abril), p. 48