The MORERA. Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Lleida, has hosted the presentation ceremony of the donation by Benet Rossell (Àger, 1937 – Barcelona, ​​2016) to the Lleida City Council, destined for the MORERA collections.

Lleida, November 18, 2025 — The MORERA. Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Lleida, has hosted the presentation ceremony of the donation of Benet Rossell (Àger, 1937 – Barcelona, ​​2016) to the City Council of Lleida, destined for the MORERA collections. A set of 226 works and a series of documentary archives that make Benet Rossell one of the most widely represented artists in the MORERA collections, underlining his paramount importance within the national and state artistic panorama.

This donation, materialized between 2024 and 2025 by Cristina Giorgi, the artist’s widow, responds to Rossell’s express desire to link an essential part of his legacy to the city that recognized and loved him from the beginning, which confirms the Museum as a reference center for the country’s contemporary artistic memory.

The presentation was attended by the mayor of Lleida, Fèlix Larrosa, and Cristina Giorgi herself. The event closed with a round table where Teresa Grandas, curator of the MACBA, Àlex Mitrani, curator of the MNAC, and Jesús Navarro, director of the MORERA, discussed the importance of Benet Rossell and his work in the context of contemporary art, and its significance in the collections of these three museums.

A vast creative universe

Benet Rossell is one of the most unique and expansive creators on the Catalan and international art scene. Trained in Paris from 1964, his work navigates between disciplines —action, experimental cinema, drawing, objects, visual poetry, performance, sculpture or installation— to build his own universe based on minimal gesture, intimate calligraphy and subtle humor.

Rossell has always maintained a close relationship with Lleida. In 1983 he exhibited for the first time at the Ereta Taller. In 1986 he received the Morera Medal, an award that recognizes his artistic career and left several public sculptures in the city: “L’Arbre Paer” -installed in 1997 in Plaça del Seminari (at the foot of the Seu Vella hill) and currently in Plaça de Bores (in front of the entrance to the Champs Elysées)-; “L’Ametlla com balla” -which has been in Plaça de l’Escorxador since 1999-; and “Una salut de ferro” -in the gardens of the Arnau de Vilanova Hospital in Lleida since 2006-.

The donation

Between 2024 and 2025, his widow, Cristina Giorgi Genesio, was in charge of materializing the artist’s last wishes, which were specified in a donation agreement with the Lleida City Council that allowed the entry into the MORERA collections of:

1. A set of 150 pieces from his production linked to the visual arts, made between 1960 and 2007.

2. A set of 76 films from his audiovisual production, made between 1969 and 2016.

3. A set of documentary archives linked to the figure of Benet Rossell, such as copies of the films in which he participated as an actor, documentaries about his figure and work, and recordings of the different acts of homage received throughout his career, from 1973 to 2022.

A conversation between museums: MNAC and MORERA

The final round table of the event opened a dialogue about Rossell’s presence in three key institutions in the country, based on reflections that the speakers have expressed in their works and public interventions.

Àlex Mitrani highlighted that “Benet Rossell is a central and marginal artist at the same time in contemporary Catalan art. With his radicalism and sensitivity, he builds a bridge between conceptual and more lyrical art, and his work recently incorporated into the MNAC and now into the MORERA expands an essential vision of the country’s artistic plurality”. This idea was already articulated in the exhibition “Donation of Benet Rossell. Writings and Journeys” (MNAC, 2022).

Jesús Navarro, for his part, pointed out: “Benet Rossell’s intention was that a relevant part of his work would return to Lleida. This donation, therefore, is also an act of justice with the artistic history of Ponent and opens the door to new research and readings on his creative universe, which allows us to understand how the territory of Lleida also participates in a creative modernity that is international”.

For his part, the mayor of Lleida, Fèlix Larrosa, considered that the incorporation of Benet Rossell’s legacy, thanks to the generosity of his widow Cristina Giorgi, represents a fair and necessary recognition of an essential figure of contemporary creativity born in the lands of Ponent. “This donation reinforces our city as a cultural and avant-garde pole.”