Sala Parés

Well-established in 1877, Sala Parés is the first art gallery founded in Spain. It has three different spaces in a single building located at heart of the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, where the work of the 35 contemporary artists with whom the gallery works is exhibited. The Gallery usually holds individual exhibitions of its resident artists in three separate display spaces.

As for painting, it has both authors who work from contemporary figuration and realism, as well as others who express themselves in abstraction. There are also some artists from the gallery that focus on sculpture, photography and video art, as well as others who formulate their proposals from hybrid approaches with the intersection of various techniques and disciplines. Besides, Sala Parés organises extraordinary curated exhibitions on specific episodes in the history of Catalan art and on its most renowned historical artists. 

Sala Parés collaborates with museums, cultural institutions, universities, foundations and other international and foreign art galleries. The gallery also organises concerts, guided tours and various cultural activities.

Represented artists:

Carmen Alvar, Alberto Bañuelos, Joan Boy, Marcos Cárdenas, Ángel Mateo Charris, Greta Chicheri, Garikoitz Cuevas, Carlos Díaz, Dis Berlin, Stefaan Eyckmans, Leticia Feduchi, Carlos Forns, Gorka García Herrera, Federico Granell, Rafel Joan, Michael Kenna, Juan Carlos Lázaro, J. M. Guerrero Medina, Juan Antonio Mañas, Eva Miquel, Carlos Morago, Ramon Moscardó, Josep Moscardó, Gloria Muñoz, Marcos Palazzi, Magí Puig, Alejandro Quincoces, Miguel Rasero, Xavier Rodés, Joseba Sánchez Zabaleta, Josep Segú, Gonzalo Sicre, Brigitte Szenczi, Manuel Velasco, Lluís Ventós, Albert Vidal, Miquel Vilà

Cuadros de compañía, 2025-2026 continues the conceptual line of Guillermo Pérez Villalta’s most recent exhibitions, in which a reflection on the idea of “classicality” hovers throughout. His painting establishes a constant dialogue between form and thought, pursuing Beauty as the ultimate goal of both the creative process and the pictorial outcome.

This exhibition brings together a series of around forty works —accompanied by more than fifty drawings— consisting of small and medium format paintings that can act as companions, as they are perfectly suited to being moved and relocated, thus fostering an intimate and enduring relationship with painting. In these works, Pérez Villalta presents genuine mental exercises in which he employs geometry as the primary means of attaining Beauty, exploring new paths, emphasizing contrasts between bodies and voids, and creating unusual mysteries and enigmas, some of which evoke formulas and motifs from earlier moments in his career. The formal twists and turns of this latest body of work serve to construct portals that connect us with hidden realities and endow life with meaning through the adventure of looking. As the artist himself notes in the exhibition catalogue: “Life emerges in order to become conscious of beauty.”