Casa Masó de Girona dedicates an anthology to the nineteenth-century artist Adolf Fargnoli, the artist who lived “fame and oblivion”

2023-11-29 14:02:32

The Masonic House of Girona opens this Thursday the first anthological exhibition on the work ofAdolf Fargnoli (1890-1951), the noucentist artist who lived “fame and oblivion”. Brother of the photographer Valentí Fargnoli, he was considered one of the most representative artisans of the noucentisme. Especially as a result of his particular wooden boxes, which achieved international fame, and which Salvador Dalí himself described with the qualification of “degenerate pornography” (in his eagerness to combat the movement from Surrealism). The exhibition at Casa Masó, which can be seen until March, includes more than 200 original objects by Adolf Fargnoli with the intention of rescuing it from the oblivion it suffered during the post-war period.

Born in Bisbal d’Empordà in 1980, Adolf Fargnoli was considered in his lifetime one of the most representative artisans of the noucentisme. Especially following the particular boxes, caskets and small chests, which have become authentic collector’s items. During the post-war period, however, he fell into oblivion and now, as the Rafael Masó Foundation underlines, “reveals himself as an artist that needs to be reconsidered, as a creator of delicate and poetic objects, and as an avant-garde graphic designer “.

With the desire to rescue both his figure and his work, Casa Masó is now dedicating the anthological exhibition ‘Adolf Fargnoli (1890-1951),. From noucentism to the avant-garde’. The sample includes more than 200 original objects of the artist, which are complemented by photographs and press clippings from the time. In the exhibition you can see drawings, sketches, invitations, exhibition catalogues, poster projects, wooden crosses, plaster and ceramic objects… But above all, what stands out are 28 of the famous boxes that emerged from the hands of Fargnoli.

In fact, these pieces were so famous and emblematic of the noucentisme that they achieved international prominence. So much so that even Salvador Dalí himself, in 1927, described them as “degenerate pornography” (because they personified the art and taste of an era that the artist from Figueres wanted to combat with surrealism).

Curated by the art historian Pilar Vélez, until recently director of the Barcelona Design Museum, the exhibition wants to present “a new dimension of Fargnoli” thanks to the access that Vélez has had to the documentary legacy of the family of the artist and numerous private collections.

The commissioner was able to achieve wood and ceramic works so far little known. But above all – highlights the foundation – “an unpublished documentary set of drawings, catalogs and manuscripts that add another dimension to Fargnoli, placing him in an aesthetic much closer to the vanguard of the graphic arts of his time”.

“The broadening of the perspective allows us to discover that the artist himself wanted to distance himself from the work that had given him fame and conceived innovative and avant-garde solutions in the graphic design and printing of his catalogs and brochures,” explains the Rafael Masó Foundation. In parallel, the exhibition also recalls the “essential” role that the noucentista architect i cultural promoter had “in the art of Girona and its time”, acting as a bridge between the artists, the critics and the exhibition halls of Barcelona during the first third of the last century.

“It was necessary”

The mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, emphasizes that dedicating an exhibition to Fargnoli’s work was “necessary” to “represent and see his famous boxes and caskets”. “They are a set of works that, a hundred years later, do not cease to fascinate us as they once amazed the people of Girona, from all over Catalonia and from all over the world”, adds Salellas.

The exhibition has been jointly organized by the Rafael Masó Foundation and the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC), which has also collaborated with the publication of the catalogue. Precisely, the directors of the MNAC and the Foundation, Pepe Serra and Jordi Falgàs, emphasize in the catalog that “it is more necessary than ever to claim the work of this unique figure in the history of Catalan art of the 20th century”.

Above all, they emphasize, because “it is difficult to understand how a creator who became so famous and made as many exhibitions in his lifetime as he fell into almost absolute oblivionand today is still virtually unknown to everyone, except for a handful of collectors who seek out his works with passion and obsession.” “Fargnoli’s caskets and small ceramic vases have the ability to transport us to a world far away and at the same time very close, a time when our grandparents carefully kept the little treasures of the home in little boxes that in themselves had to be unique and precious objects, to the point that they were given a name and so on they acquired a personality”, add Serra and Falgàs.

The anthological exhibition on Adolf Fargnoli will be inaugurated tomorrow evening at Casa Masó. It can be seen there until March 23 and during the summer of 2024 it will move to the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC). The last exhibition dedicated to him, in 1997 at the Municipal Halls of Girona, presented his work together with that of his brother, the photographer Valentí Fargnoli, who has also been vindicated in recent years.