The President of Banco de Sabadell visits the CAEM

Yesterday, September 19th, we received the visit of Mr. Josep Oliu, President of Banco Sabadell, together with some members of his team.

We also had the presence of the president of the Parc Agrobiotech and rector of the University of Lleida, Mr. Jaume Puy, the Manager of the UdL, Mr. Ramon Saladrigues, the President of the Social Council of the UdL, Mr. Delfí Robinat and, finally, the Parc manager, Mr. Miquel Aran.

During his visit, led by Dr. Mª Antonia Argelich, director of the CAEM, Mr. Oliu was able to understand the manner the center functions, as well as learn about some of the studies of artworks carried out in recent years, always from a organoleptic vision crossed with the non-invasive diagnostic techniques in which the CAEM is specialized, mainly the multiband analysis, using ultraviolet, infrared and X-ray spectrum techniques.

Felipe V. Garín Llombart, professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, CAEM’s scientific advisor and friend of Professor Ximo Company has died

Dr. Garín’s cursus honorum was extraordinary: He had been director of the Museo San Píuo V in Valencia, director of the Museo Nacional de Cerámica in Valencia, director of the Museo del Prado, director of the Academia de España in Rome, director of the Instituto Cervantes in Rome, director the Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior and director of the Consorcio de Museos de la Comunidad Valenciana. He collaborated effectively with the CAEM on a valuable study on an unpublished self-portrait by Joaquín Sorolla (2022).

Institutional interrelation: The CAEM team visits the Centre d’Art la Panera of Lleida

We thank its director, Christian Alonso, for his invitation to guide us through the current exhibitions.

During our visit, we learned about the exhibition “La terribilitat de la carn”, where the artist Marc Herrero transfers the iconography of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment to the contemporary world, and reinterprets it in relation to the current situation of ecological collapse. Grouped into thematic areas, Herrero’s images reformulate animal religious philosophy, taxidermy practices, productivity dynamics, mutation phenomena, and the human desire to dominate the world.

We also visited “Afectes sònics”, a collective exhibition that explores the role of sound as a relational, creative and transformative tool. Basing their work on transdisciplinary research and technological mediation, the artists combine methods such as field recording, modular synthesis, composition, performance, sonification of environments or sound poetry. Adopting typologies such as immersive installation, sound sculpture or video, the projects invite visitors to listen, interact, experiment, improvise and create.

La Panera is a platform for the production and dissemination of contemporary visual arts that goes beyond exhibition and is positioned at the intersection of research and creation.

The Minister of Science and Innovation visits the CAEM

Last Friday, September 1st, the Minister of Science and Innovation, Mrs. Diana Morant, visited the Centre d’Art d’Època Moderna of the University of Lleida, accompanied by the president of the Parc Agrobiotech and rector of the University of Lleida, Mr. Jaume Puy, and the manager of the Parc, Mr. Miquel Aran.

During her visit, led by Dr. Mª Antonia Argelich, director of the CAEM, the minister was able to understand the manner the center functions, as well as learn about some of the studies of artworks carried out in recent years, always from a organoleptic look crossed with the non-invasive diagnostic techniques in which the CAEM is specialized, mainly the multiband analysis, using ultraviolet, infrared and X-ray spectrum techniques.

The CAEM closes the 2022-2023 academic year with a pleasant balance of novelties

Among the most interesting pieces studied this year, we have had a magnificent artwork by Paulus Potter, a seventeenth-century Dutch painter specializing in landscapes with animals. A version of the Penitent Magdalene from El Greco’s workshop, that had been acquired in Madrid on the last century and that had been reviewed in the bibliography of the Master and his workshop since 1908, also arrived to CAEM from the American continent, without having ever been subject of technical analysis.

Continuing with El Greco, we are preparing the study of a magnificent Saint Francis of Assisi that belonged to the collection of the Art Historian Josep Gudiol.

It has been, moreover, a year rich in international relations, as we were hired for a campaign to study an art collection in Montecarlo and a beautiful eighteenth-century female portrait deposited in New York. Thanks to these and other pictorial studies carried out throughout this year, the CAEM continues to consolidate itself as a prestigious centre for the study of artistic works worldwide.

The professors of the University of Lleida, Josep Antoni Clúa and Ximo Company, members of the CAEM, write an exciting bilingual book on Humanism.

Prepared and edited by Josep Antoni Clúa, Professor of Greek Philology at the University of Lleida, the book Humanismo. Conversaciones con Ximo Company (Lleida, 2023), follows the genre of relaxed conversations, although not without depth, that try to rediscover a new meaning for the plural concept of Humanism.

To read a review of the book, click here.

Our new work in The Conversation: Authorship or attribution, that is the dilemma of the art world

When is the attribution of an artwork one hundred percent certain?

After our last publication in book format about the Saint Agnes that we attributed to Zurbarán, we received a series of questions that made us realize how unclear society in general is about the difference between attribution and authorship of a work. That is why we have written this article in which we answer the question: What does it mean to attribute a work of art?

To read the full article, click here.

Dr. Ximo Company, emeritus director of CAEM and the young Picasso

The recent publication of Dr. Company has aroused academic interest in the little-explored stage of this artist’s youth. It is a critical reflection on Picasso’s first formative stage, still a child-adolescent between 10 and 12 years of age. In this book the artist’s skill in drawing and his surprising level of analytical dissection of the elements that make up the structures of his drawings become evident, a prelude to what will be his cubist facet exploited already in his artistic maturity. A prolific artist since his almost unknown stage in A Coruña, which this publication echoes, helping to understand the creative beginnings of one of the greatest geniuses of the 20th century.

The book presents four drawings related to this creative universe of Picasso, studied at the Center d’Art d’Època Moderna of the University of Lleida by Dr. Ximo Company between 2015 and 2016, and which until now had not been presented to the public, arousing academic interest around the implicit critical reflection towards the rights of attributionism of the works of art of recent artists. In short, a topic that has been of academic interest and has been published in Spanish and English in scientific journals such as The Conversation.

To read the full article, click here.

“Yo soy Goya…” and the portrait of Juana Galarza de Goicoechea, in the Lonja of Zaragoza

At CAEM we are committed to the search for truth in each work of art. And sometimes, as it happened with this portrait of Juana Galarza de Goicoechea, the path we follow leads us to the hands of great authors. In this case, the lines of this small drawing led us to Goya. The study of the artwork lasted more than three years, and culminated in the publication in book format of the investigation with all the details discovered in the piece.

Now, a year later, we are pleased to see that it has been included in the exhibition “Yo soy Goya. La Zaragoza que viví, 1746-1775”, curated by Domingo Buesa. It will be there from March 30 to July 25, 2023.

To learn more about the exhibition, click here.

The Centre d’Art d’Època Moderna (CAEM) of the Universitat de Lleida attributes an artwork to Zurbarán

CAEM researchers attribute to the Extremaduran master a splendid Saint Agnes, that once belonged to the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection.

It is an oil on canvas measuring 140.7 x 105.6 cm in which Saint Agnes is represented, with a lamb in her arms, her most distinctive attribute. This artwork had captivated numerous art historians for more than a century and a half, who rightly considered it “one of the most beautiful saints executed by Zurbarán”.

The artwork, from the collection of the Duke of Béjar, was acquired in 1957 by Baron H. H. Thyssen-Bornemisza, until, in 1984, it was sold to an anonymous collector. From then on, it is known that it passed through several more owners, always acquired as a Francisco de Zurbarán of undeniable quality. However, in 2010 his paternity was questioned. It was then attributed, in a barely convincing way, to the little-known “Master of San Hermenegildo”: a minor master, of whom only one work is known for sure, of much lower artistic quality than this Saint Agnes.

After being acquired by its current owner, finally in 2020, the work ended up at the CAEM, where it has been studied with absolute scientific rigor. It has been analyzed live, in great detail, and with a transversal perspective, in which the researchers of the centre participated, as well as other renowned specialists. The result has been overwhelming: after more than two years of research and with the precise application of various multi-band and chemical analyses, the CAEM research group concludes that this magnificent Santa Inés is an indisputable work by Zurbarán. Surely this is one of the few works that has been made entirely by his hand, fully coinciding with the opinion held for more than a century and a half by the best art historians in the country.

The result of this exhaustive investigation has been published with abundant and precise illustrations in a bilingual Spanish-English version.

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