From 24 November 2018 to 23 April 2019, the Museu d'Art in Girona hosted an exhibition entitled 'From Paris to Girona. Mela Muter and Polish artists in Catalonia'. The idea for the exhibition was undertaken and realised by the Museu d'Art in Girona/Catalan Cultural Heritage Agency, in collaboration with the Department of Culture (Generalitat) and the POLONIKA Institute, and co-curated by art historians Gloria Bosch and Susanna Portell and Polish art historian Dr Artur Tanikowski.

The presentation becomes not only an opportunity to get to know the artist's works, but also refers to the Parisian milieu of Polish artists, showing them, and especially Mela Muter, in Barcelona and Girona more than a century ago. The exhibitions of their paintings at the Dalmau Gallery in 1911 and 1912, the visit of Polish painters to Barcelona in 1912 and the painter's subsequent stay in Girona in April and May 1914, as well as the exhibition in Girona's Athenea Hall of the paintings painted at that time, are the central axis of the present exhibition.
The works selected tell the story of Mela Muter's life and artistic journey; most of those shown in Girona were painted between 1906 and 1930. They show well the themes that would particularly preoccupy and concern the artist throughout her intense artistic life: woman, motherhood, old age, blindness, but also portraits and landscapes, two genres so special to her work. Unjustly forgotten after the Second World War, Mela Muter's paintings stand out for their particular expressive power: with influences from Post-Impressionism alluding to Cezanne and Van Gogh, the syntheticism associated with Gaugain and the Pont-Avent school, Nabism and the Fauvists. The Polish artist developed her own style, full of energy and strength, which more than once provoked comments that she paints like a man; to this criticism she rebelled, responding that she is a woman and, as a woman, retains her sensitivity, her flaws and her strengths.

The exhibition shows 75 works (53 oils, 19 drawings and 3 sculptures), 57 of which are by Mela Muter. They are complemented by articles from the press of the time and the artist's personal documents: notebooks, photographs and her special diaries written towards the end of her life, which include reflections on her paintings and the journeys she made.

Most of the works shown in the exhibition come from Poland, but there are also works from Berlin, Paris, Castres and Switzerland; many of them have not been shown before in Catalonia, where there are few works by the artist: two on permanent display at the National Museum of Catalan Art MNAC (Holy Family, 1909 and Portrait of the Marchand Josep Dalmau and Rafael, 1911), one at the Girona History Museum (Carrer Cundaro, 1914), one at the Museu d'Art in Girona (River Onyar, 1914) and three in private collections (Maternity, 1911, En Nando, 1914, Portrait of the Painter Leopold Gottlieb, ca. 1908-1911).

The Girona exhibition features such well-known works by the artist as Sad Country (1906), Old Brittany with Child (1911), from the collection of Bolesław and Lina Nawrocki; The Blind Man (c.1914) from the Musee Goya et Jean-Jaures, Castres; Two Ages (1902) and Two Children (1912) - both from the Jankilevitsch Collection, Warsaw.

Alongside Mela Muter's paintings, 4 works by Leopold Gottlieb were also shown, the most notable of which are: Portrait of Andre Salmon (c. 1908-19010) and Christ as a Beggar (1908-1910), all from the Bolesław and Lina Nawrocki Collection, as well as works by Eugeniusz Zak and Elie Nadelman, of which the bronze Head of a Woman and the bronze relief La tardor (c. 1910-1915) are particularly valuable.

Exhibition authors:
The idea for the exhibition was undertaken and realised by the Museu d'Art in Girona/Catalan Agency for Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the Department of Culture (Generalitat) and the POLONIKA Institute, and co-curated by art historians Gloria Bosch and Susanna Portell and Polish art historian Dr Artur Tanikowski.

Exhibition venues:
24.11.2018-23.04.2019 - Museu d'Art in Girona (Spain)