Temporary exhibition

From March 12 to May 31, 2026

The exhibition project aims to interpret, from the field of art and culture, all the serious problems that the Catalan peasantry entails .

In literature, painting or other artistic manifestations, the pastoral genre is what idealizes peasant, farmer life. The bucolic vision of the Catalan rural world, often constructed from the cities, has originated an often mistaken and distorted imagination of a reality much more complex than we imagine. In this exhibition, the complexities of the country’s peasant reality are highlighted through visual representations of the rural contexts of Catalonia from the end of the 19th century to the present day. The exhibition is organized in different areas where historical works dialogue with current pieces, creating counterpoints and tensions (pastoral counterpoints) that allow us to see, through art, an almost anthropological, yet critical, evolution over the last 150 years of a part of the Catalan rural world.

This project aims to read and interpret from the field of art and culture, in general, all the serious problems that Catalan farming entails and all its consequences: the abandonment of the countryside, the hegemony of intensive farming, the food sustainability of an entire territory, the loss of farmland to the benefit of alternative energy oligopolies, the old debate between city and countryside and the immensity that is drawn between each of these poles. We find ourselves at a time when all these questions, and more, are debated in the rural world and, sometimes, also reach the general media: therefore, a reading from the world of culture and history is necessary, to approach the land without condescending positions and to do so, who knows if paradoxically, from the city.

This is an old problem; a debate between the urban world and the rural world in which one acts as a mirror of the other, but a distorted mirror, in which the rural world is reduced to a bucolic and neglected imaginary. A debate made up of cries of demand, data, ignored complaints, of a generalized misunderstanding.

With the support of:

Temporary exhibition

From March 12 to May 31, 2026

The exhibition project aims to interpret, from the field of art and culture, all the serious problems that the Catalan peasantry entails .

In literature, painting or other artistic manifestations, the pastoral genre is what idealizes peasant, farmer life. The bucolic vision of the Catalan rural world, often constructed from the cities, has originated an often mistaken and distorted imagination of a reality much more complex than we imagine. In this exhibition, the complexities of the country’s peasant reality are highlighted through visual representations of the rural contexts of Catalonia from the end of the 19th century to the present day. The exhibition is organized in different areas where historical works dialogue with current pieces, creating counterpoints and tensions (pastoral counterpoints) that allow us to see, through art, an almost anthropological, yet critical, evolution over the last 150 years of a part of the Catalan rural world.

This project aims to read and interpret from the field of art and culture, in general, all the serious problems that Catalan farming entails and all its consequences: the abandonment of the countryside, the hegemony of intensive farming, the food sustainability of an entire territory, the loss of farmland to the benefit of alternative energy oligopolies, the old debate between city and countryside and the immensity that is drawn between each of these poles. We find ourselves at a time when all these questions, and more, are debated in the rural world and, sometimes, also reach the general media: therefore, a reading from the world of culture and history is necessary, to approach the land without condescending positions and to do so, who knows if paradoxically, from the city.

This is an old problem; a debate between the urban world and the rural world in which one acts as a mirror of the other, but a distorted mirror, in which the rural world is reduced to a bucolic and neglected imaginary. A debate made up of cries of demand, data, ignored complaints, of a generalized misunderstanding.

With the support of: