25th YEAR of the Rusiñol Gallery: Calsina comes back

An image for History: 25 years ago. It was May 13th, 1986, the dawn of the Rusiñol Gallery. On that occasion a number of celebrated painters were gathered: Calsina, Miquel Cabanas, Amat, Camps Ribera, Commeleran and Benavent. Ever since, the Rusiñol Gallery has promoted around 400 exhibitions… Our gratitude to all —artists, experts, friends— that have had, with their contribution, a say to make the Rusiñol Gallery.

Another image for History: May 13th, 2011. It is the 25^th YEAR of our Rusiñol Galley. Representing all of them, Calsina comes back… He was present with his brilliant art, with the spirit his vey work exudes, and with his family. In the picture we can see the Calsinas and the Rusiñol Gallery “family”.

Ignasi Cabanas deeply stirred: «25 years have gone by. I was then a young trainee; now I remain the same. But I conduct the exhibition with the same illusion as the first time». May 13^th is not an arbitrary date: amongst other convergences, one such day his father —Miquel Cabanas— passed away. «Without his support we could not have started this Gallery». Ignasi welcomes everybody, especially the Calsinas and Mr. Daniel Giralt-Miracle.

Daniel Giralt-Miracle —exceptional witness of that faraway May 13^th— solicited an applause for the Cabanas family and the Rusiñol Gallery. «That any gallery may reach its 25^th year of existence is, in our time, an outstanding feat. Our society has also changed the communications means, fairs have appeared…: this doggedness in maintaining these sources of culture has a lot of merit». Pioneers in this city, in the field of art galleries «the Rusiñol Gallery has been the beginning of the modern Sant Cugat».

According to Giralt-Miracle, that legendary May 13^th, the Rusiñol Gallery had an important initiative and made a smart move: to retrieve a full generation of painters —masters of figurative art— that had remained marginalized by a flood of information and abstraction. Giralt-Miracle had a particular and complimentary mention for Ramon Calsina: an unusual man of enigmatic personality, he was known for his refined technique, but where he really excelled was in his magical and fantastic imagination.

Josep Mª Cadena: «Ramón Calsina was a master at piercing things through a gathering full of imagination and his sense of irony and realism. His paintings received a ferocious and unfair criticism, especially at the beginning of the year ’39, when he did not want to give up his vision of the world». Cadena congratulated himself because at the Rusiñol Gallery, they do not work only with a commercial sense; on the contrary, they rather exhibit art as a manifestation of life: «Art in Catalonia, our art, will always go forward because today is presided by Ramon Calsina i Baró».