Galeria Marc Domènech

Galeria Marc Domènech is focused on promoting and defending the art of the 20th century. Its activity is aimed at working with the most representative works of the main national and international artists of this period.

As well as focusing its efforts on this line of historical avant-garde, Galeria Marc Domènech also directs its activity to boost and promote two more lines of work that simultaneously define the profile of the gallery; one on contemporary art and the other entitled "Artists rediscovered" focused on recuperating artists from the past who have not received their deserved recognition.

Represented artists:

Pic Adrian, Rosa Amorós, Manuel Ángeles Ortiz, Miquel Barceló, Erwin Bechtold, Maria Blanchard, Esther Boix, Magda Bolumar, Sara Bonache, Francisco Bores, Jorge Camacho, Rafael Canogar, Agustín Cárdenas, Cardona Torrandell, Gaston Chaissac, Joaquim Chancho, Eduardo Chillida, Martín Chirino, Luis Claramunt, Antoni Clavé, Germán Cueto, Modest Cuixart, Salvador Dalí, Óscar Domínguez, Jean Dubuffet, Maurice Estève, Will Faber, Luís Feito, Apel·les Fenosa, Luis Fernández, Pablo Gargallo, Albert Gleizes, Julio González, José Guerrero, Ramon Guillen-Balmes, Hans Hartung, Manuel Hernández Mompó, Joan Hernández Pijuan, Hessie, Manolo Hugué, Max Jacob, Paul Klee, Wilfredo Lam, Henri Laurens, Le Corbusier, Fernand Léger, Jacques Lipchitz, Antoni Llena, Baltasar Lobo, Alberto Magnelli, André Masson, Roberto Matta, Jean Metzinger, Henri Michaux, Manolo Millares, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Zoran Music, Georges Noël, Pablo Palazuelo, Ana Peters, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Enric Planasdurà, Jaume Plensa, Joan Ponç, Charo Pradas, Joan Rabascall, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Manuel Rivera, Josep Royo, Miquel Rué, Jaume Sans, Antonio Saura, Teo Soriano, Josep Maria de Sucre, Antoni Tàpies, Joaquín Torres-García, Juan Uslé, Victor Vasarely, Vicenç Vilaplana, Esteban Vicente, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Moisès Villèlia.

For many years, Joan Claret was an artist with major international recognition and one of the leading figures of Catalan abstract painting in the second half of the 20th century. In recent years, several exhibitions have helped contextualise his work and highlight its significance. With this exhibition, 1959 Joan Claret Paintings, we aim not only to emphasise the importance of the artist, but also to focus on a single year of his career — a year in which he first presented a body of work that would become the foundation of all his later artistic production.

All the works in the exhibition come from the artist’s collection, and most will be shown publicly for the first time following careful cleaning and conservation work carried out to protect this important legacy and restore its original strength and nuances. The result is a remarkable group of paintings that demonstrate the vitality that geometric and kinetic painting had in Catalonia during the 1950s and 1960s, as also seen in the work of Joan Vilacasas, Joan Puig Manera and Enric Planasdurà, among others.

Indeed, 1959 was a crucial year for Joan Claret: it was also the year he returned from Paris and held his first solo exhibition at Sala Gaspar. This marked his definitive break with the classical and figurative style he had pursued after abandoning his architectural studies in the early 1950s, and the beginning of a path centred on constructivism. His commitment was bold and determined, especially considering that the artistic scene at the time was largely dominated by Informalism. Cirici Pellicer described Claret as “a pure constructivist painter, a heroic resister against Informalism”. Thus, 1959 was the year in which Claret fully embraced geometric painting inspired by his architectural knowledge, while also establishing a clear formal distance from the large Informalist artistic community of the period.