At the beginning of the 20th century, American collector Charles Deering turned Maricel into the home of an extraordinary collection of Hispanic art that brought together both great old masters and some of the most prominent artists of Catalan modernity. Over time, this collection was dispersed, and the narrative that had given meaning to the project was partly forgotten.

We will meet at the Maricel Museum in Sitges to visit the exhibition Absences and Presences: Charles Deering’s Artists in the Banc Sabadell Art Collection, which symbolically recovers this history by bringing 26 works from the Banc Sabadell Art Collection back to Maricel, created by artists who had been part of Deering’s project. These include works by Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas, Joaquín Mir, Hermenegild Anglada-Camarasa, Joaquim Sunyer, Eliseu Meifrèn and Enric Casanovas, among others, who once again engage in dialogue with the spaces for which they were conceived, in a proposal combining painting, sculpture and works on paper.

The tour is completed by historical photographs that allow us to reconstruct the memory of the Maricel complex and understand the role this space played in shaping Catalan artistic modernity and in the cultural projection of Sitges.

The visit will be led by Sebastià Sánchez Sauleda, PhD in Art History and curator of the exhibition.

Image: Santiago Rusiñol, Ramon Casas Velocipedist, 1899. Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.