This donation enriches in an extraordinary way the photography collection of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, which counts with the largest representation of conserved pieces by this master of the Catalan pictorialism. This exceptional set, unique in all the public collections of the country, and with an enormous artistic and patrimonial value, was in the museum's deposit since 2006. The director of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Pepe Serra, wants to particularly highlight "the great task by his family, who allowed the preservation of the pieces by Casals i Ariet, as well as the generosity of the daughter of the artist for this donation". 

 

Josep Maria Casals i Ariet was one of the principal Catalan exponents of pictorialism, a movement emerged in the last decades of the XIX century with the purpose to enhance photography to the category of art through the reproduction of pictoric subjects and the use of elaborated technical positivity resources. The width of Casals i Ariet production, is formed by mountainous landscapes, marines, harbour sights, dead nature and portraits, themes he resolved with a great sense of lightning, atmospheric values and composition, just as the full control of the pigment technique of transported bromul, which grants the photographies with qualities similar to print, and furthermore, a greater stability. 

 

Loyal to the pictorialist aesthetic throughout his whole life, Casals shared his work in several exhibitions celebrated in the Photographic Agrupation of Catalonia -institution from which he was a member- and in other local, national and international shows. In 1994, he was object of a first retrospective, Casals i Ariet, el darrer clàssic (Centre Cultural de la Fundació La Caixa, Vic).