An exhibition that brings the literary world of Marcel Proust closer to the artistic universe of its main interpreter, Luis Marsans.
Coinciding with the centenary of the death of Marcel Proust (Paris, 1871–1922), this exhibition aims to help the public discover, on the one hand, the world of a unique novelist and that of his great work, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), and, on the other hand, that of his main artistic interpreter, Luis Marsans (Barcelona, 1930–2015), who spent his life recreating the work ever since his first exhibition at the Galeria Trece in Barcelona in 1972. However, Marsans does not try to exhaustively ‘reread’ the novel nor revisit the most memorable scenes but rather rescue its characters liberated from the tyranny of time, just as a Chinese watercolour painter would do. Thus, he lets all these Proustian characters, scenes and scenarios appear and take on lives of their own until they become the happy transposition of a literary world into an artistic one that seeks its own autonomy.
The exhibition is presented – in three sections – as an introduction to the narrative world of the novel In Search of Lost Time and the role that art and music play as great literary metaphors; it features a wide selection of drawings, watercolours, gouaches and engravings through which Marsans evoked the book with a broad interpretative freedom; and, in the final section, the unique reception Proust’s work has received in Catalonia from the nineteen twenties – Pla, Sagarra, Gaziel – to the present day, including the publication of a complete new translation, with another one in progress, and the creation of a Biblioteca Proustiana Ferran Cuito and the Societat Catalana d’Amics de Marcel Proust.
Exhibition curated by Glòria Farrés and Àlex Susanna.
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