Sitges’s own Isidre Marcet is presenting a retrospective exhibition, Un món nou. De la foscor a la llum [A New World. From Darkness to Light]  at the Miramar-Centre Cultural to showcase his unique works. The opening event this Saturday was attended by Sitges mayor Aurora Carbonell, city councillor for culture Albert Oliver-Rodés, and the painter himself alongside many friends, family members and artists.

The exhibition presents, in chronological order, the main periods in the over thirty-year artistic career of Isidre Marcet, a leading name in Catalan contemporary art. Visitors can view over a hundred works created between 1988 and 2023 that show his evolution as an artist, including paintings, drawings, sculptures and wooden object boxes using recycled items. This prolific artistic oeuvre is complemented by notebooks with poems and sketches by Isidre Marcet himsefl, as well as a recreation of the artist’s studio.

His first works are highly textural and use extremely dark colours, but his use of both colour and techniques has gradually evolved, and his latest works are less textural and much brighter, with vivid colours such as oranges and reds.

At first, Isidre Marcet worked with a technique based on pigments mixed with tar (asphalt), which made his creations thick and textural. However, over time he has shifted to paintings using fewer materials. 

The artist defines the unique style of his work as figurative and surrealist expressionism. His creative world connects with natural, distinctive strokes reflected in both his series of paintings and the rest of his pieces. “Painting is my life,” Isidre Marcet says, explaining that his goal in this exhibition is to “share how my imagination has been shifting away from materials to explore more human, personal concepts. My artistic vision emerges from a deeply emotional, spontaneous process.”

Throughout his career, Isidre Marcet has held exhibitions in several towns and cities in Catalonia and beyond. His native Sitges has also exhibited his work on several occasions, including at the Galeria del Carrer Major and Mercat Vell, and now, for the first time, at Miramar following Sitges City Council’s public contest to chooses the exhibitions at the Miramar-Centre Cultural this year. The artist’s son, Lluís, encouraged him to enter the contest, and now Isidre Marcet will have a retrospective exhibition. “It means a great deal to me to be able to exhibit my most recent works here, at home,” he says.

“City Council is firmly committed to maintaining this public contest,” says Albert Oliver-Rodés, the city councillor for culture. “This exhibition demonstrates the importance of continuing this initiative to support creators and talent.”

The exhibition will be on until 11 May.

Isidre Marcet, art as a calling

Isidre Marcet, born in Sitges in 1952, has been drawing and painting from a young age. While in secondary school, he studied oil painting in the workshop of the great Salvador Massana, who had been a disciple of Joaquim Mir. Starting at the age of 19, he studied drawing for 3 years at the La Llotja school of arts and trades, but it wasn’t until 1977 that he had his first exhibition at the Carrer Major gallery in Sitges. During this period, he also had exhibitions in Sant Pere de Ribes and Vilanova i la Geltrú. After working for a while in the hardware business, he left the family trade and started a new path, aware that art was his calling.

In the 1980s, he continued investigating and experimenting and went back to school, studying ceramics at the Escola Massana. During this time, painting and ceramics, with their physical volume, led him to explore sculpture.

The 1990s were a prolific decade for Isidre Marcet, and he exhibited several times at the Galeria René Metràs in Barcelona, in addition to participating in other exhibitions and events. Through the Galeria Canals in Sant Cugat del Vallès, he was able to participate in an exhibition that was seen in cities and towns throughout Spain. 

He has continued his artistic career in the 21^st century, eager to keep expressing himself through art and letting emotions come through in his pieces.