Antoni Mercader, pioneer of multimedia art in Catalonia, dies

BarcelonaThe artist and art curator Antoni Mercader, one of the pioneers of multimedia art in Catalonia, died on Sunday at the age of 83 in Sant Just Desvern, as announced on social media by the Muntadas Archive. Mercader and Muntadas met in the Working Group (1972-1975) and have been close friends ever since. Throughout his career, Mercader dedicated himself to the expansion of audiovisual and multimedia aspects in contemporary art as a historian, exhibition curator, director, project advisor and coordinator, as well as an audiovisual and multimedia producer. He was a member of the Machines group (1964-1966) and later co-authored the first book on video art published in Spain, About the video (Gustavo Gili, 1980), which was republished by the University of the Basque Country in 2010.

Mercader's other projects include the Espacio Cero of the Suñol Foundation. He was also one of the founders of the Catalan Society of Communication at the Institute of Catalan Studies and the University of Catalan Studies. He was also an advisor and coordinator of the Media Library of the CaixaForum in Barcelona, ​​​​coordinator of the European GAMA project and director of the European project Vivid [Radical] Memory. Argentina, and directed courses at the Catalan Summer University, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Pompeu Fabra University. Mercader is also represented in the collections of the MACBA and the Reina Sofía Museum.