The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya (MNAC) is located in the Palau Nacional of Montjuïc, which was built for the International Exposition of 1929. During your visit to the museum you’ll have the opportunity to see the works of artists of Catalan Modernism, including Gaudí and Casas. Admire masterpieces by great European Renaissance and Baroque painters, such as Tiziano and Velázquez. See the museum’s collection of photography as well.
The collections are displayed on 2 floors and you should plan on spending a couple of hours at the museum to ensure that you have time to see it all. In addition to exploring the collections, you’ll have a chance to learn about the history of the building. Afterwards, you can head up to the rooftop, which is the perfect spot for enjoying panoramic views of the city.
Temporary exhibitions:
From 27/10/2023 to 11/02/2024 - What humanity? The human figure after the war (1940-1960)
This ambitious exhibition will gather together around one hundred works by top level Catalan, Spanish and international artists who, between 1940 and the mid nineteen sixties, tackled the question of the figure and of the human condition, faced with the uncertainties, mutations, failures and hopes caused by the Second World War and its prologue, the Spanish Civil War.
From 14/12/2022 to 29/10/2023 - Donation from Ferran Garcia Sevilla. Tensions and rebellions
The artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla (Palma de Mallorca, 1949) has donated to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya an important body of work from the period between 1966 and 1974. Before his immersion in painting, which made him famous in the 1980s, Garcia Sevilla was one of the most prominent pioneers of conceptual art. With very diverse and radical proposals, Garcia Sevilla used objects, poor materials and photographs, often as documentation for performances. One of his avenues of investigation is nature, from the minuscule, such as simple pine needles, to the cosmic order, based on rhythm and the dynamic forces that determine it. Another pole of his work is the critique of symbolic structures and the violent actions of authoritarianism, which lead him to an implacable denunciation of Francoism.
From 07/07/2023 to 05/11/2023 - The guided hand. Josefa Tolrà (1880-1959) - Madge Gill (1882-1961). Visionary women
This exhibition presents and analyses the singular creativity of two women, the Catalan artist Josefa Tolrà (1880-1959) and the British artist Madge Gill (1882-1961). Artists of vast production who never thought of being recognised with this condition, both closely linked to esoteric knowledge and the methodology of the creative act guided by the automatism of the altered state of consciousness: “the guiding hand”.