"I have never painted Golden Angels" by Eulàlia Grau

She criticises the way in which the press at the time, in line with the political and economic powers, serves the interests of a controlled, censured, unjust and male-dominated society. The media propagates social models of cultural and economic dominance, as well as forms of ideological and physical violence. Eulàlia's work has become a document of a period of changes and crisis with uncomfortable parallels to the present. Her aesthetic option cannot be understood without her strong ethical commitment: it holds a prominent place among the artistic practices that make up the space of expression occupied by feminist movements at the end of modernity, and that are part of the changes in opinion that radically altered our society at the end of the Franco dictatorship and during the Transition that followed.

I Have Never Painted Golden Angels is a survey of Eulàlia's 'paintings' – as the artist herself calls her works – that helps us revisit them today with a renewed interest. The exhibition does not follow a strict chronological order. It is constructed as a visual story based on subjects that have always interested the artist: from the most obvious mechanisms of control, such as the police and prisons, to more subtle yet equally efficient devices, such as schools, labour hierarchies, access to living accommodation or to justice, and gender models. Eulàlia's silk screens and emulsified canvases are shown together with lesser known works such as posters and graphic interventions in books and magazines, media that she used to reach a wider public beyond artistic circles, practically nonexistent in those days.
 

Opening: 7 February 2013. Dates: 8 February 2013 to 26 May 2013. Curator: Teresa Grandas. Organisation and production: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA).