Helios Gómez's son makes a generous donation to the MNAC

BarcelonaThe artist Helios Gómez defined himself as Sevillian, Catalan and, above all, a gypsy. Despite all the repression he suffered, he always remained faithful to his ideas. Gómez was always on the side of the people, and now his personal collection has become public, thanks to the donation that his son Gabriel has made to the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. The donation includes six paintings, twenty-seven drawings and an illustrated book. The museum has also purchased the three paintings that Gabriel Gómez had deposited in the museum and which can be seen in the modern art rooms: Evacuation, Andalusian sour and Airborne pain (parachute with the eye). "This donation changes the collection, and the museum becomes the reference centre for Helios Gómez, an absolutely key artist in the story of the avant-garde in Catalonia and Spain," says the museum's director, Pepe Serra. "I don't know if there is another artist as relevant in this condition of avant-garde, revolutionary, of the idea of art and conflict," he stresses. "My father showed the people with their hardships, the tortured, murdered people... A part that is normally hidden in art," says Gabriel Gómez, who has been promoting his father's work for three decades.

The six paintings in the donation belong to the artist's late period, between the mid-40s and mid-50s, shortly before his death. Among these are: Transfixion, in which a surrealist language dominates, and Despair, a dreamlike composition that can be interpreted in a personal way, because the protagonist is a gypsy. Among the guaches, three works from the 1920s stand out, "against the grain", as the museum says, from the most popular part of his work.

The chronicle of the Civil War

One of the most important aspects of Helios Gómez's career is how he denounced the ravages of the Civil War. Among the drawings included in the donation are four from the series Horrors of war, considered "major works of the strictest war chronicle." One of these drawings is especially relevant because it is the ink version of the painting Evacuation.

"Helios Gómez's work was somewhat lost," laments Gabriel Gómez. Among the vicissitudes he suffered, his son recalls that he was arrested before the opening of his exhibition at the Arnaiz gallery in Barcelona in 1948 and that his works were stolen. In parallel to the donation, the Department of Culture is restoring The Gypsy Chapel that Helios Gómez painted in La Modelo during one of his stays in prison, an initiative for which Gabriel Gómez gives "infinite thanks."